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Why English matters
Why English matters
English enables pupils to master the spoken and written word in order to communicate clearly and express themselves confidently. It instils a love of literature through reading for enjoyment as well as for meaning and inspires pupils towards excellent writing through real-life contexts, drama and immersion in high-quality texts.
The study of English in our school enables us to realise our vision of life in all its fullness by:
The study of English in our school enables us to realise our vision of life in all its fullness by:
Kindness - Developed through reading high quality texts with a diverse range of characters. This immerses children in other cultures, settings and viewpoints enabling them to understand the world beyond themselves.
Growth - We expose children to a range of demanding and inspirational texts showcasing different examples and genres of writing which include high level vocabulary. Teachers model writing which promotes high expectations and enables children to use similar features in their own work. Children are encouraged to take peer and teacher feedback on their writing, building their resilience.
Integrity - The use of ‘I’ve finished my writing’ posters, success criteria and individual writing targets encourage children to own their learning and development. Children understand how their use of language can impact others.
Joy - The English classroom environment is inclusive and caring. Texts are chosen to support the emotional development of children and opportunities are given for creative writing where children can express themselves freely.
Reading
Reading
Reading is prioritised across the school as we see it as the door to unlock a child’s access to the full curriculum. We foster a love of reading through our class libraries, weekly discussions around books and by regularly reading to and with our classes.
How we teach reading and writing:
How we teach reading and writing:
Reading
We use the ‘Close Reading’ approach in our daily whole class reading lessons. These lessons happen throughout the school at 11.30 - 12pm every Monday - Thursday and focus on four key areas of reading practice and comprehension: prosody, vocabulary, discussion and producing their own written responses to the text. The final reading session of the week on a Friday is time for children to visit their class libraries, discuss, recommend and change their books and read their chosen books for pleasure.
As well as our structured, whole class reading lessons, teachers read aloud daily to children to model and encourage a love of reading.
Writing:
Daily English lessons are taught for one hour a day using our ‘Writing Journey’ sequence of lessons.
This sequence builds in the following way:
○ Read and engage - immersion in the text type, including exploring models to engage children
○ Skills development - developing an understanding of structure, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary in the text type studied, through models
○ Draft, write and edit - using their understanding of the text type as well as the specific grammar, punctuation and vocabulary needed to create a high quality, extended piece of writing
We believe the quality first teaching approach to our ‘Writing Journey’ enables all to achieve the highest outcomes, regardless of their starting points.
Grammar and spelling are taught at different stages of the ‘Writing Journey’ and through stand alone lessons where necessary. Spellings are practised daily, based on research and practice first introduced by AfC specialist adviser, Sarah Herbert (May 2019).
A well sequenced and progressive curriculum:
Our English Subject Overview highlights the following points for each writing journey: the aim of it, any key texts that will be used to support learning and the success criteria needed to achieve the aim. This overview also highlights the whole class reading texts and spelling patterns for each year group. This overview ensures we meet the National Curriculum requirements and that teachers can quickly see what has been taught in previous years so that they can retrieve and build on prior learning, before introducing new skills and knowledge.
Planning is supported by the Centre For Literacy In Primary Education (CLPE) Power of Reading resources and high quality, diverse texts widely recognised as excellent (and recommended by AfC).
Children with additional needs:
For children who join our school as ‘early readers’, we use ‘Little Wandle: Letters and Sounds Revised’ to deliver targeted, timebound ‘rapid catch-up’ phonics interventions. This systematic, synthetic phonics scheme is used by our link Infant School so that children with phonics gaps receive a seamless transition and ‘pick up where they left off’ at our school. This intervention is always in addition to the English and Whole Class Reading sessions; never at the same time.
Teachers work collaboratively at each stage of the planning process to ensure the sharing of expertise and the adaptation of planning to suit the needs of classes, groups or individuals.
How we know we are doing it well:
How we know we are doing it well:
Assessment for learning takes place throughout the Writing Journey. As the culmination of the Writing Journey, a larger piece of writing is completed linked to the genre being studied. Detailed marking of these pieces ensure children are assessed against the success criteria (taken from our Key Performance Indicators - KPIs) as well as being given individual targets to work on specifically, often related to presentation and handwriting.
Summative assessment of children’s progress in writing takes place at set times during the year. Children’s writing is assessed against the year group’s KPIs, and judgements are moderated by colleagues in the year group, colleagues from other year groups and with SLT in termly pupil progress meetings. Teachers also moderate their writing judgments together with other local schools. Pupil Asset is used to document both formative and summative data which provides detailed data relating to attainment and progress.
Rising Stars PIRA tests are completed on a termly basis and used to inform summative judgement for reading, alongside teacher judgement. These summative judgements are recorded on Pupil Asset.
The Little Wandle phonics scheme is used to track progress in reading where children are not yet secure in their phonic knowledge. The Information from initial placement assessments and regular 4 weekly progress assessments is used to inform phonics groups and track children’s progress.
Little Wandle Fluency Assessments are used to track progress of children who are ‘working towards’ the expected standard in reading to ensure that they are improving their reading fluency.
Spelling is assessed on a daily/weekly basis either verbally with peers or in a written test.
Subject leader and SLT monitoring happens regularly in a variety of ways, including through book looks, learning walks, observations of teaching & learning, staff training, pupil voice and alongside external advisers through AfC.
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