English

'If we talk about literacy, we have to talk about how to enhance our children's mastery over the tools needed to live intelligent, creative and involved lives.' (Danny Glover)

We believe that talk underpins thinking and so is key in helping children to become more engaged and effective in their learning. To that end we teach our children to express themselves increasingly confidently and coherently through discussion and role-play, and as they grow older through drama, presentations and debate.

Our children are taught to read using a range of strategies that are designed to stimulate and challenge their thinking and comprehension. In doing so, our aim is for all children to develop a love of reading, and for us to create enthusiastic, motivated life-long readers and writers. Our shared and guided reading sessions begin from Nursery and continue all the way through to Year 6. Each classroom has a book corner containing fiction, non-fiction and poetry to support children’s acquisition of knowledge and encourage reading for pleasure. Additionally, both our schools have attractive, well-resourced school libraries and well-equipped ICT facilities. As children grow older these facilities help them to research their schoolwork and personal interests. The School follows Little Wandle for phonics and uses the Book Band system of graded readers until the children become fluent, independent readers and no longer need to.

We aim to establish close partnerships with parents and guardians, and particularly value the help and support they give by sharing books and stories with their children at home.

We encourage the children to write on a wide range of topics and for a variety of audiences. We understand the importance for children to write for a purpose and therefore our lessons are planned to stimulate and engage their imagination and develop their topic-specific vocabulary. We are also keen to engage the children in local and national issues and events at an age-appropriate level, which they always find particularly enjoyable and interesting to learn about. The children are taught to use accurate spelling, grammar and punctuation throughout their written work and use our own school script.

Infant School

Our Infant School is culturally and linguistically diverse, which creates a rich, vibrant place of learning. As our children join us from a wide range of starting points on the journey to becoming fluent English users, we put language development at the heart of our curriculum. By the time our children leave us, our intent is for them to be equipped not just with the age-appropriate English knowledge and skills to allow them to move on to the next stage of their educational journey successfully, but also to have an enthusiastic approach to learning and enquiring minds.

Implementation: Our rich, broad balanced curriculum is designed to be delivered through thematic units that have at their heart and starting point high quality texts. This allows for learning to be contextualised, with English skills under-pinning subject-specific study. Each year group’s curriculum map is revised annually by teachers, and is planned to incorporate the range of objectives from the English Curriculum and subjects specified in their Key Stage including Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development.

Reading is given high status in the school, with all our children read with and to daily by staff. They are taught to read through whole class and group guided sessions. We use the phonic scheme Little Wandle Letters and Sounds to start the children on their journey to reading. The school matches the books the children read to their phonic phase. Over the course of the year a range of text types are covered, with children’s writing derived from these genres. Over time, we revisit genres so that previous learning is revised and built upon, and each academic year some whole school projects allow knowledge to be integrated and interrelated. To deepen their knowledge and vocabulary, our children explore both fiction and non-fiction texts, and poetry where appropriate, within each topic. We developed our own school script, which is cursive. This is taught from Reception. In Year 1 children begin to learn to join letters, which supports and strengths spelling, and their writing is fully joined by the end of Year 2.

We work closely with outside agencies, such as an Educational Psychologist, a Speech Therapist, a Drama Therapist, Social Services and CAMHS, to ensure that all our children can access our rich curriculum at their own appropriate stage of learning. Interventions are put in place for those who may need additional support to close the gap between them and their peers.

Impact: Children make good progress in acquiring knowledge and skills in English and as a result achieve well from low starting points. This is reflected in their outcomes at the end of Reception and Year 2 which are broadly in line with National Outcomes, and in the Phonic Screening Check.

We assess impact through pupil voice, evidence in books and regular formal assessments.

Junior School

Intent

Talk underpins thinking and so is key in helping children to become more engaged and effective in their learning. Children are taught to express themselves confidently and coherently through discussion and role-play, and as they grow older through drama, presentations and debate.

We equip children a range of strategies designed to stimulate and challenge their thinking and comprehension. In doing so, our aim is for all children to develop a love of reading, and for us to create enthusiastic, motivated life-long readers and writers.

Our shared and guided reading sessions begin from Year 3 and continue all the way through to Year 6. Each classroom has a book corner containing fiction, non-fiction and poetry to support children’s acquisition of knowledge and encourage reading for pleasure. Additionally, both schools have attractive, well-resourced school libraries and ICT facilities. As children grow older these facilities help them to research their schoolwork and personal interests.

Our school follows ‘Letters and Sounds’ for phonics and uses the ‘Book Band’ system of graded readers until the children become fluent, independent readers.

We strive hard to establish close, productive partnership with parents and guardians, and value the help and support they give by sharing books and stories with their children at home.

We encourage children to write on a wide range of topics and for a variety of audiences. We understand the importance for children to write for a purpose and therefore our lessons are planned to stimulate and engage their imagination and develop their topic-specific vocabulary.

Children are encouraged and supported to engage in local and national issues participating in events that are age-appropriate which they always find particularly enjoyable and interesting to learn about. They are taught to use accurate spelling, grammar and punctuation throughout their written work use our own school script.

Our aim is for all children to develop a love of reading, and for us to create enthusiastic, motivated life-long readers and writers. In doing so, our children are taught to read using a range of strategies that are designed to stimulate their mind.

Children are you encouraged to write on a wide range of topics and for a variety of audiences. We understand the importance for children to write for a purpose and therefore our lessons are planned to stimulate and engage their imagination and develop their topic-specific vocabulary.

We are also keen to engage the children in local and national issues and events at an age-appropriate level, which they always find particularly enjoyable and interesting to learn about.

As part of their learning, they know the importance of accurate spelling, grammar and punctuation throughout their written work but also have access to use our own school script to enrich their vocabulary.

Our English curriculum covers reading, writing and grammar to give depth and breadth to their study of the subject equipping all children to develop the broad range of skills through exposure to learning appropriate to their age and ability. Take English literacy as an illustration, children have daily English lessons, and guided reading sessions with opportunities to apply their literacy skills in other subjects whilst applying some vocabularies learnt in other subjects during English lessons.

Communication through speech and writing is an essential skill. Firm foundations in the basic skills grammar, punctuation, spelling, comprehension, speaking and listening together with cursive handwriting.

Implementation

Our rich, broadly balanced curriculum is designed to be delivered through thematic units that have as the starting point high quality texts. This allows for learning to be contextualised, with English skills underpinning subject-specific study.

Each year group’s curriculum is revised annually by teachers with guidance from the subject lead. Based on this review, a Priority Action Plan is developed for each class. The subject lead makes use of the individual teacher’s Priority for Improvement to develop a whole School Action Plan which is then implemented and reviewed by the subject lead. High level monitoring is undertaken by the headteacher providing senior management input on the overall direction of the Plan. The subject lead conducts periodic review of the Plan through feedback from colleagues and peer review to ensure the Plan’s relevance, reliability and improvements are safeguarded.

Impact

Children are expected to make good progress in acquiring knowledge and skills in English and as a result achieve well in comparison to national benchmarks. This is reflected in their outcomes at the end of Year 6 and through in-year monitoring of their performance. We also assess impact through the confidence expressed in pupils’ voices and the ease with which they communicate, the range and depth of vocabularies used and evidence in books and regular formal assessments.