English
We aim to deliver a high-quality curriculum that gives children the best possible opportunities. Teachers will have high expectations for all children to achieve the very best they can and enjoy English. Using the Literacy Tree and curriculum, quality texts are at the heart of our teaching and a love for reading and writing is promoted throughout the school.
Speaking and listening
Children are given every opportunity to develop their speaking and listening skills and they take part in drama and role play as well as discussions, debates and prayer assemblies.
Reading
Through our own passion for reading, we aim to foster a love of reading in our children. The quality texts at the heart of our curriculum, are chosen carefully to match the needs of our children and we look for a balance of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. To promote a love of reading we all:-
- Read aloud to children in every year group
- Model and encourage reading for pleasure
- Focus on quality literature
- Use our well-stocked library to support our teaching
Phonics is taught to pupils in Early Years and KS1 (Year 1 & 2). Where children in Key Stage 2 require additional phonics intervention, teachers or support staff will provide 1:1 or small group support using the Read Write Inc. programme. We passionately believe that with the right support, all children can and will learn to read; we want children to learn to read quickly and accurately and to then keep on reading. Our aim is for children to see reading not only as a task set by teachers in school, but as an activity which provides pleasure and escape from the modern world.
Reading is taught though high-quality English texts and through reading comprehension lessons. In Key Stage 2, we following the Complete Comprehension programme that focuses on the following skills: word-meaning, retrieval, summarising, inference, prediction, relationship, word choice and comparison. We use the Accelerated Reading and MyOn to further enhance children’s reading opportunities and allow access to a wide range of books from home.
Writing
The teaching of writing is embedded across our curriculum and the children write regularly for a range of purposes and in different contexts through Literacy Tree and Literacy Shed texts that are mapped alongside the Dimensions Curriculum. Teachers encourage writing from its emergent start, through developmental attempts, to its final, independent stage. Our cursive writing style is modelled by all teachers and teaching assistants.
As well as encouraging reading for pleasure, we also encourage writing for pleasure and our curriculum seeks to create conditions that promote writing as a pleasurable experience. It has, at its centre, the aim of promoting a love of writing which will be continued into children’s personal and working lives long after they leave school. To promote a love of writing we will:-
- Write alongside children, sharing their writing practices
- See all children as writers and teach strategies that lead to greater independence
- Model and teach all components of the writing process
- Make the connection between reading for pleasure and writing for pleasure through our use of quality texts
Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling
Wherever possible, grammar and punctuation are taught in a contextualised way through our quality texts. This is supported by the use of the Literacy Tree curriculum which has grammar sessions embedded throughout. The teaching of spelling begins in EYFS and Year 1 through phonics (Read, Write Inc). Spelling Shed is used to teach spellings to the other year groups and children also have access to this online teaching programme at home.
In essence, we aim to create a community of readers and writers, with all children leaving our school as life-long readers and confident and literate members of society.
