English

Intent   

English and the teaching of English, is the foundation of our curriculum. 

Our main aim is to ensure that every single child becomes literate and progresses in the areas of reading, writing, speaking and listening. We ensure that English is not only taught as a discrete subject but that it is embedded throughout the curriculum.  

Through using high-quality texts, immersing children in vocabulary rich learning environments and ensuring curriculum expectations and the progression of skills are met, children will be exposed to a language rich, creative and a continuous English curriculum which will not only enable them to become appropriately literate but will also develop a love of reading, creative writing and purposeful speaking and listening.  

It is our aim to develop enthusiastic and confident readers who can understand a wide range of texts. 

We want children to read for interest, information and enjoyment so that they can participate fully in society, both in the workplace and for leisure purposes.  

We want our children to write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. We believe that all pupils should be encouraged to take pride in the presentation of their writing, in part by developing a neat, joined, handwriting style by the time they move to secondary school. We believe that all good writers refine and edit their writing over time, so we want children to develop independence in being able to identify their own areas for improvement in all pieces of writing, editing their work effectively during and after the writing process. 

Reading

We aim for all our children to become fluent, confident readers who are passionate about reading.

Children who read regularly and who are read to regularly, have the opportunity to open the doors to so many different worlds. More importantly, reading gives children the tools to become independent life-long learners.

We teach children to read using a systematic, synthetic phonics programme.

We use Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised in EYFS and KS1 and in KS2 we use Accelerated Reader. 

Writing

We use Literacy Tree to support the teaching of writing across the school.

Literacy Tree supports us in using high quality books that offer opportunities for empathy and can aid philosophical enquiry, as a means of developing the spoken language requirements through debate, drama and discussion using the issues raised through, and within, the text. We will always aim for our writing opportunities to be meaningful and to feel authentic, whether these are short or long, and that the audience is clear. Books offer this opportunity: our aim would be that that children have real reasons to write, whether to explain, persuade, inform or instruct.