ENGLISH
Our Curriculum Threads
Our curriculum threads are woven through our READING curriculum as it:
Encourages children to discuss, review and reflect upon the books that they read, improving their LANGUAGE & ORACY.
Enables children to develop WISDOM AND WONDER through exposure to a rich and diverse range of texts that celebrate and highlight key events and current societal issues.
Gives children the opportunity to choose books that allow them to escape to different worlds, as well as promote the love of reading, which in turn promotes HEALTH AND HAPPINESS.
Allows children to explore DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION, through exposure to books written by and containing stories from different cultures, communities and celebrates differences. This helps them to enrich their comprehension through a diverse range of texts. Whole-class approaches ensure that everyone is included and is exposed to rich and diverse texts.
Our Curriculum Threads are reflected through our WRITING curriculum as it:
Encourages children to use their LANGUAGE AND ORACY skills to provide feedback to peers, read their writing aloud to others and explore the roots of the English language, as well as its complexities and intricacies.
Develops the WISDOM of identifying audience and purpose, as well as the WONDER ignited within our ‘hook’ lessons.
Promotes a HEALTHY mind that is encouraged to be creative and self-expressive. HAPPINESS results from opportunities to self-publish and perform their own work.
Considers the DIVERSITY of our community and wider society through our collection of carefully-selected key texts that encompass the learning. A whole-class approach to writing encourages the INCLUSION of all abilities, strengths and needs.
Intent
At Winkfield St. Mary’s Primary School, our English curriculum is planned in line with the National Curriculum which aims to promote high standards of spoken language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment.
The national curriculum for English aims to ensure that all pupils:
- read easily, fluently and with a good understanding
- develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
- acquire a wide vocabulary
- an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language to appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
- write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
- use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas
- are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate.
At Winkfield St. Mary’s Primary School, we want all of our children to develop a love of reading and writing, which will enable them to actively seek books as a source of pleasure and enjoyment as well as wanting to pick up a pen and record their thoughts, feelings, imagination and knowledge. We want them to become enthusiastic, independent and confident readers and writers. To do this, they need to have opportunities to read and write for interest, pleasure and information, and receive encouragement to select from a wide range of literature.
Implementation
At Winkfield St, Mary’s, reading and writing is taught daily from Reception to Year 6. Within the Early Years and Year One, the foundations of early reading and writing is taught through daily ELS phonics lessons. The ELS scheme is used by practitioners to plan and deliver sessions and we have invested heavily in training all staff who work directly with children. In addition to this, we have resourced phonetically decodable books for in class and at home. Once children come off of the ELS books, we have a large selection of reading scheme and ‘free reading books’ which are used for reading lessons, individual reading and for reading at home.
English lessons are also delivered from Reception to Year 6 daily using our Key Text Approach. These 'Literacy Tree' lessons allow children daily access to high quality texts and the children's reading, writing and GPS skills are developed through these. In addition to this, in Key Stage Two, specific reading comprehension lessons are led by the class teacher. Each week, all children visit our school library and are able to borrow a book of their choice. Children are given opportunities to read with adults and at the end of the school day, have the opportunity to listen to a high-quality shared class text.
Interventions run daily for children who have not been able to grasp the concept of the lesson or task. These interventions are run by both learning support assistants and class teachers.
More able challenges are set during lessons to extend and further challenge our more able learners to continue to develop their fluency, comprehension and writing skills.
In addition to all of the above, our children are continuously developing their English skills across other areas of the curriculum in order to apply and therefore, embed their learning.
Impact
Monitoring of the teaching and learning of both reading and writing across the school takes place on a regular basis through learning walks, book looks and pupil conferencing. Internal and external moderations are carried out throughout the year to identify children who are yet to make expected progress. This then supports us to adapt and develop our curriculum accordingly.
A range of methods are used to discover what our children know and understand. ELS has its own assessment tools which support adults in allocating children into the most appropriate group. The Development Matters Framework and the Early Learning Goals support teachers in the Early Years to make well informed decisions of children's attainment and next steps. Regular reading and writing assessments in both Key Stages One and Two such as Benchmarking, NFER and ‘Literacy Leaf’ Reading Comprehension provide teachers with standardised, curriculum linked assessments which evaluate children's understanding of taught concepts and can, in turn, address any misconceptions or gaps in learning. Once this is identified, teachers will plan for these to be addressed in the upcoming lessons or during tailored interventions.