Our English curriculum is designed to develop pupils’ spoken language, reading, writing and vocabulary as integral aspects of the teaching of every subject. Our intent is that children develop the ability to understand and apply their skills in the English language confidently across all subjects.

Reading

Our goal for Reading education is for children to read fluently, both for enjoyment and information, enabling them to access all future learning, to develop essential life skills and to nurture a love of reading, through the gems (big ideas):

Reading begins with our phonics programme, Read Write Inc (RWI), in EYFS and Key Stage 1, a method of learning based upon letter sounds and phonics, which gets children off to a flying start in reading. Phonics is taught daily in structured sessions with learning revisited within independent activities.  You can find out more on our phonics and early reading page by clicking here.

We provide engaging, stimulating and welcoming reading areas in each of the classrooms, along with a central library area, and have curated a lively, varied and current stock of reading books. 

Choosing a book is often the most difficult part of reading so we help the children by focussing on their interests and provide fun ways of choosing books: 

Each class is read a class book by their teacher every half term. The classroom reading areas are also stocked with books by the same author or of the same genre. 

Writing

Our goal in teaching writing is for our pupils to know that the purpose of writing is to communicate with others, be creative and to interest the reader. Writing is taught and developed through our gems (big ideas):

Early mark making skills and writing are celebrated and built upon as our children start their journey as writers. Talk for writing and drawing club techniques are used to develop thinking and confidence.

As children progress through the school, they develop the stamina and skills to write independently at length, with accurate spelling and punctuation across the curriculum.

They are taught how to plan, revise and evaluate their writing (composition). Their ability to spell quickly and accurately is developed and encouraged through knowing relationships between sounds and letters (phonics), word structure (morphology and etymology) and spelling structure (orthography). We enhance our pupils' vocabulary through direct instruction (e.g. teaching words themselves and teaching word-learning strategies) and by creating a language rich culture, providing rich language experiences, resources and texts and fostering word consciousness and curiosity. Correct grammatical terms are taught to pupils and they are encouraged to apply these terms confidently to discuss language and apply their skills to a range of texts. 

Writing is celebrated in our school in displays (inside and outside), during assemblies and our wider community: engaging everyone and encouraging pupils to take pride in the their work.

English Curriculum

• Class reader long term plan
• English Glossary
• English Key Vocabulary
• English Long Term Plan
• English Progression of Knowledge KS1
• English Progression of skills Writing
• EYFS English Long Term Plan
• KS1 Writing progression
• LKS2 Writing progression
• Overview of English Reading
• Overview of English writing
• phonics progression
• Reading and Phonics Scheme Statement 1
• Reading Dogs Progression v2
• Reading Progression of Skills
• Sapphire LTP overview Revised
• UKS2 English Long Term Plan
• UKS2 Writing progression
• UKS2 Writing Progression of Skills
• Whole School Reading Progression