English

English Curriculum

Reading

Teachers model reading strategies during shared reading sessions within lessons and specific Guided Reading lessons. Class timetables also allow dedicated time for developing a love of reading through specific ‘reading for pleasure’ sessions where children can read independently, share books and discuss book recommendations and reviews. Staff also timetable opportunities to listen to pupils read individually where bespoke, individualised support can be offered – this is scheduled according to pupil needs to allow those children that need it to be given more regular support. A range of banded reading scheme books are used to support individual reading and our scheme has recently been extended to support pupils right through Key Stage 2 as well as with early reading.

Guided Reading is taught in Early Years with small groups of children. In Year 1, Guided Reading is taught using a carousel approach where pupils work with the teacher in a small group on one day and then spend time on subsequent days completing follow up work to develop reading skills and strategies. From Year 2 to 6, Guided Reading is taught using a whole class model. These whole class sessions are planned to link to the relevant content domain and develop essential reading skills such as; inference, vocabulary development, retrieval and sequencing.

Each class also has a ‘class story’ which the teacher reads to children at the end of each day. We use the Oxford Reading Scheme throughout school and recently extended our scheme to follow children all the way up n to Upper Key Stage Two. This allows us to ensure that children continue to develop their reading fluency and accuracy and develop secure skills to become lifelong readers.

We have worked hard to develop our school library. We have purchased a considerable amount of new books, developed the library environment and have a committed group of Pupil Librarians that support with the running of our library.

Writing

We aim to develop the children’s ability to produce well-structured, detailed writing in which the meaning is made clear and which engages the interest of the reader. From Early Years to Year 6, teaching of writing is linked to a text. Long-term English overviews demonstrate the key texts for each year group and outline how opportunities for writing are planned from these starting points. Careful attention has been given to ensuring a range of text types and authors have been used which allow teachers to link teaching of formal structures of English, grammatical detail, punctuation and spelling. Elements of the Talk for Writing approach are incorporated in English teaching in Early Years and Key Stage 1 where pupils are given a text structure to learn and then adapt/innovate to create their own writing.