Approach to English at St Lucia’s CE Primary and Nursery
Introduction
At St Lucia’s C of E Primary School and Nursery we are committed to ensuring the effective delivery of a progressive and vibrant English curriculum that is accessible to all our children. English is a core subject of the National Curriculum and a prerequisite for educational and social progress. Therefore, we are committed in our aim that every child will be competent in the art of communication; speaking, listening and writing, as well as inspiring a passion for reading.
Intent
Reading is at the heart of St Lucia’s curriculum and we strive to develop a child’s love of reading both at school and home. Our aim is for all children to read for pleasure; developing confidence in decoding, developing reading fluency and have reflective and secure comprehension skills. Inspiring children to become absorbed by a wide range of rich quality reading material is essential in developing children who become lifelong readers. The pleasure of being read to, being able to read and enjoy reading will allow our pupils to thrive. We intend that all our children leave us holding a love of reading which will equip them academically and socially, with a greater understanding of people and the world around them, and importantly with self-confidence, self-esteem and the emotional vocabulary to express themselves throughout their educational and working lives.
Writing is an integral part of our curriculum with valuable cross curricular opportunities captured as often as possible. It is our intention that pupils develop a solid understanding of writing processes to ensure they can write effectively for different purposes, together with the ability to draw upon effective vocabulary and grammatical features. St Lucia’s provides a progressive, stimulating and motivating writing curriculum enabling children to become authors in their own right through developing knowledge of genre features, audience, purpose, language, grammatical features and effective composition techniques. We intend that children will be able to develop and edit their writing over time and identify their own areas for improvement.
Speaking and listening is valued across our curriculum and is developed throughout our school. It is our endeavour to ensure that we provide a ‘Language Rich’ learning environment which allows all pupils to be able to communicate and articulate clearly and confidently. Our children will be able to listen and respond appropriately to adults and their peers; show confidence when challenging perceptions; ask questions; speak audibly, fluently and with empathy and have a good command of Standard English.
Implementation
Our English curriculum is implemented through the use of rich texts and engaging pupils with a cross-curricular approach. Texts are chosen to link with the topics pupils are learning about and these are used as a stimulus to inspire pupils to read and write.
Our English curriculum aims to provide many purposeful opportunities for reading, writing and discussion. Our English lessons develop pupils’ spoken language, reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary, teaching them how to write within specific genres and which structural and language features to include to be successful.
Our approach to writing is genre based for each unit, ensuring that pupils are exposed to a range of genres across the term and have the opportunity to develop the skills to enable them to create pieces of writing in the style of each genre. Elements of the ‘shared writing’ technique are implemented within the teaching, children have opportunity within every lesson to apply their learning to an activity or to creating writing. The approach ensures pupils begin with modelled texts and demonstrated writing, where they explicitly are taught to recognise and identify key features of the genre. Pupils are then involved in the process of writing, contributing ideas to create ‘joint compositions’, where the teacher models creating pieces of writing in front of the children, gathering and combing the children’s ideas. As the unit continues ideas from children’s writing are shared and the opportunity is given for mini-write in the input, children are able further develop into independent writing. This method to teaching writing is not prescriptive, different units will require different amounts of modelling and time for creating independent pieces; adaptive teaching will be used to respond to the needs of all pupils. Teachers use a wide variety of resources as appropriate to their classes, but also ensure that cross curricular links with concurrent topic work are woven into the programme of study. Opportunities will be taken for creative links and a range of stimulus will be used to inspire and motivate writing for different purposes.
Throughout school we develop enthusiasm and enjoyment around reading, with children experiencing a wide range of texts and listening to adults reading aloud. Our ‘Reading Roots’ underpin our reading curriculum throughout school. In addition to daily English lessons, our pupils develop their early reading skills through the use of our Bug Club phonics programme. Pupils receive high quality phonic teaching throughout EYFS and KS1. Phonological awareness helps the development of reading and writing by segmenting and blending sounds. Our teaching of reading continues through into KS2, through both guided reading in groups and whole class reading sessions. From the beginning of their time within school children are encouraged to choose texts and enjoy reading for pleasure. As pupils begin Phase 2 in Reception the reading book allocated closely matches the sounds being taught, in order that children can consolidate and apply their understanding. Children progress through the corresponding reading books in line with their phonics teaching and progress onto coloured book bands, moving through KS1 and into KS2, before becoming ‘free readers’.
Impact
Pupil enthusiasm and engagement is an excellent indicator of a developing love of English. Through moderation of planning, lessons and books, we can be sure that progress is made across all year groups. If progress is not being made, support is immediate, and steps provided to ensure all pupils achieve and make progress.
Summative assessment takes place at the end of each term and children’s progress and attainment is discussed with senior leaders in pupil progress meetings. Formative assessment takes place daily and teachers adjust planning accordingly to meet the needs of their class.