English

We believe that English is a vital part of the school curriculum that supports the development of all curriculum areas and ensures the growth of essential learning skills for the future. English encompasses the areas of reading, writing, speaking and listening. We ensure that all our pupils develop a secure understanding of all forms of oral and written literacy to effectively communicate with others. The sections below summarise the approaches we take in all the areas of English.

Programme

We follow the Primary National Curriculum for all aspects of the English Curriculum. Developing a love of reading, and the importance of this for our children both now and in the future, lies at the heart of our English curriculum.

Our ELAN English curriculum is made up of progressively sequence learning journeys for Year 2 to Year 6. These are led using a quality text as the stimulus, this may be fiction (including poetry) or non-fiction.

In Early Years and Year 1, our English curriculum is focused upon early reading, early writing and phonics so that all children have developed an understanding of and confidence with:

• storytelling
• vocabulary
• sentence sense
• comprehension
• handwriting
• phonics

Reading

A love of reading is encouraged by an ever increasing range of provision:

• children are able to take a library book home to encourage reading for pleasure 
• children take part in daily instructional reading sessions 
• children focus on a story book as part of their English lessons
• children have a reading book that is matched to their phonic level, where appropriate 
• children receive book awards for displaying golden behaviour
• children have the opportunity to read to an adult at breakfast club, breaktimes and at homework club
• children listen to a class story every day to encourage reading for pleasure 
• children experience author visits and book fairs 

Staff enthusiasm for reading and knowledge of classic and current children’s literature is also a high priority. Beyond the English lesson, children are exposed to and immersed in a wide range of stories, poems and other texts through book events, library visits and story-time.

When teaching reading, we use a phonics-first approach, with texts matched to each child's individual reading stage.  However, a child's joy of reading and books encompasses so much more than the ability to decode. 'Three ways to read a book' are modelled to our youngest children so that they are able to access and enjoy a wide range of beautiful picture books and immerse themselves in the magic of story-telling.

• Reading the pictures
• Reading the words (for phonetically decodable books only)
• Retelling a familiar story

It is important for children to access texts that are appropriate for their ability in reading to enable them to apply the skills taught in phonics as well as other reading skills. Phonically decodable books are also used and these are banded by phonic step.  It is vital that early reading is done through the use of phonically decodable texts and therefore we ensure that the first books children receive to read at home are matched to the phonic step they are on and contain graphemes that they will be familiar with at any point in their learning. A variety of reading schemes are used in school including: Bug Club, PM (linked to Reading Recovery) and Dandelion Phonically decodable books. Children are regularly assessed to ensure that their reading level is correct for them and this is done using running records and PM Benchmarking.

Reading for meaning is embedded in our teaching of reading across the school.  This is reinforced during all reading sessions where children are given time to discuss their thoughts about books and guided reading sessions happen daily in KS1 and four times a week in KS2.  Starting from the initial understanding that all children bring to text, teachers facilitate discussion, provide modelling and use book talk to deepen understanding of what is read. 

In EYFS and KS1 this discussion is verbal with some recording beginning in Year 2. KS2 use Scholastic Read and Respond Guided Reading  and BUG CLUB Guided Reading (including access online) to give children the opportunity to read a range of texts. They also provide a progression in the type of questions that children will answer in line with the National Curriculum requirements for comprehension. 

Phonics

We follow the approach to phonics teaching as outlined in Extend Letters and Sounds, a validated scheme.  Children begin this programme in EYFS and continue it into the first part of Year 2 where it is superseded by the Spelling Programme. The Phonics programme is a 9 step approach to the systematic teaching of phonics.

The central principles involve:

• Children having knowledge of the alphabetic code;
• Children having the skill to blend to read;
• Children having the skill to segment to spell;
• Children understanding these as a reversible process.

Extend Letters and Sounds (validated scheme) links reading and writing to phonic knowledge and has been of great benefit for our children. The knowledge children acquire to support their development of early reading is equally as relevant for their development as a writer. It is important that children are given equal opportunities to practise and apply their phonics skills in writing and reading tasks so that they can understand the relationship between decoding skills for reading and encoding skills for spelling. These skills are underpinned by the modelling and teaching of good listening skills, combined with frequent opportunities to improve children’s visual and auditory memory and their ability to sequence. These skills are developed through the teaching of activities to promote phonological and phonemic awareness in young children before they embark on a systematic phonics program.

Writing

We believe in immersing our children in texts through reading and analysing the skills of an expert writer. This is important as through this emersion, children become aware of the language skills of a writer and use this as a model for their writing. Using this model, children develop greater competence in the conventions of spelling, punctuation, sentence structures and text organisation.

Through our curriculum, children will develop:

• a strong command of the written and spoken word
• the ability to write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
• the confidence and competence to produce high quality writing
• a good understanding of grammar and punctuation and its use in effective written communication

Spelling

Once children have secured their phonemic knowledge, we use the Year 2- 6 Spelling Programme developed by Extend Learning to teach spelling. This programme is designed to deliver a systematic, explicit and interactive approach to spelling, which encourages children to develop an understanding of how the English spelling system works through investigation and application.  

From Year 2 to onwards, we teach children the morphology of words (how words are structured and related to one other by a combination of form, grammar and meaning). Children are supported in their understanding of basic morphological principles which they can apply to the spellings of over half a million words. Where words are irregular, and do not follow the rules, we use etymology (the stories behind the spelling of certain words) and graphic strategies to help children to learn these spellings. Spelling sessions include an opportunity to revisit previous learning, acquire new learning about a spelling rule and finally to practice and apply this learning.

As part of the National Curriculum, children are expected to learn compulsory lists of spellings. These words are ones which are used a lot or may be especially tricky to spell. There are two sets of high frequency words which are taught in Key Stage 1. In addition, we teach the Y3/4/5/6 lists through our regular spelling, punctuation and grammar lessons in Key stage 2. 

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