English

Intent

At Heytesbury C of E Primary School, we make the teaching of English the foundation of our curriculum. Our belief is that reading, writing, speaking and listening are the keys to all learning and our ability to communicate. We are determined to help our children develop into articulate and imaginative communicators, to support and enhance their thinking and understanding of the world around them through a broad, rich and engaging English curriculum.

Through the teaching and learning of English, and an exposure to a language-rich environment, our students learn about themselves, their values, rights and responsibilities and enhance their ability to empathise. We place books, vocabulary and reading at the heart of everything we do, as tools to gain knowledge and develop emotional literacy.

Our aim is to ensure that every child becomes primary literate and progresses in reading and writing as well as speaking and listening. We mindfully endeavour to ensure that children develop a lifelong, healthy and enthusiastic attitude towards English, to equip our students with the necessary skills and passion to support them in their forthcoming secondary education and to meet the aims of the National Curriculum:

· Read easily, fluently and with good understanding.

· Develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information.

· Acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language.

· Write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.

· Use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and clearly explain their understanding and ideas.

· Are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate.

Implementation - Reading

Learning to Read

For phonics, we follow a systematic approach using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme. Through this rigorous and consistent approach, each grapheme is introduced clearly; a focus is placed on blending to read and segmenting to spell. This provides children with the skills they need to begin to read words, captions and whole sentences as soon as possible. The teaching of phonics begins in Reception, and teaching continues daily to at least the point where children can read almost all words fluently.

Right from Reception through to Year 2, children practise reading using decodable books that are closely matched to their developing phonic knowledge. Our children often reread the same text multiple times to develop their comprehension and fluency which includes their accuracy, automaticity (rapid recall of whole known words) and prosody (reading with expression). Alongside their independent reading of decodable books, our youngest pupils have daily story time and share books across the curriculum to ensure they develop a true love of reading.

As soon as children master the alphabetic code and can read Phase 5 books fluently, they focus on developing fluency skills in Year 2 as the bridge to comprehension, using the Little Wandle Fluency Programme. These are short chapter books designed to improve pupils’ fluency and give opportunities for developing comprehension skills. From year 3, pupils begin whole class reading lessons reading a diverse range of fiction books which are progressive as the children move through the school.

Reading to Learn

Within every KS2 reading lesson, time is taken to explicitly teach vocabulary encountered in our reading, to enable pupils to learn a variety of words and increase their own overall comprehension of a text. Pupils are given opportunities to practice fluency, ensuring that they continue to build on the foundations from KS1 to be able to read accurately and at a speed enabling comprehension of the texts. Reading lessons allow for pupils to engage with and discuss quality texts, building their understanding of stories and characters. Pupils also practice applying reading strategies to demonstrate their understanding as well as having opportunities to read and explore poetry and non-fiction texts.

Reading for Pleasure

Our daily story-time sessions ensure the children are read to everyday and regular book talk- sessions allow pupils to share, discuss and enjoy the endless possibilities of books.

Across the school, each child also has a banded book which matches their reading ability, to ensure they experience the right level of success and challenge. In KS1, children can choose ‘Sharing Books’ to take home to share with adults to read for pleasure. In KS2, we support pupils to select free reading books and have a well-stocked KS2 library to choose from.

Implementation – Writing

Handwriting

Children are taught handwriting in every year group. In Reception, children focus on forming their letters and numbers accurately, with the correct pencil grip, using the Little Wandle letter formations. When pupils are ready to learn joins, we use the Letter-Join progression which complements the letter formations taught in Little Wandle, to ensure our teaching of handwriting is progressive and comprehensive. By the end of Year 2, our children should have a comfortable and joined handwriting style.

Writing in EYFS

Activities such as Dough Disco and continuous provision opportunities are chosen to strengthen pupils’ fine motor skills in preparation for writing. Pupils have a wide range of opportunities for mark-making from the start of their time in Reception, and provision activities allow them to use a range of writing and mark-making materials. Teacher-led writing activities support pupils with letter formation and applying their phonics knowledge to spelling words containing sounds they have learnt, with rich discussion and vocabulary from stories providing inspiration and stimuli for their writing. Throughout the year, pupils are supported to develop their ability to write letters, words, phrases and eventually sentences that can be read by someone else, preparing them to write in KS1.

Writing in KS1

Pupils are immersed in stimulus texts and materials to give them the ideas for writing. Grammar and punctuation objectives are taught discretely and then consolidated and practised in subsequent lessons. Pupils discuss the story and vocabulary of texts, with teacher modelling and scaffolds to support sentence construction. In Year 1, pupils are supported to sequence sentences and continue to apply increasing knowledge of phonics to spellings, and by the end of year 2, pupils will write a range of narratives, recounts, non-fiction texts and poems. By the end of KS1, pupils are developing a range of vocabulary and have the foundational knowledge of sentence structures and punctuation secure to be ready to write in KS2.

Writing in KS2

Pupils have regular spelling lessons using the Spelling Shed progression, and discrete PAG lessons to explicitly teach an aspect of writing which is then practiced and applied in subsequent lessons.

We use Jane Considine’s The Write Stuff methodology to ensure pupils are explicitly taught the skills and craft of writing.

Teaching sequences include experience and sentence stacking lessons, with modelling at the heart of them. Sentences are taught under the structural framework of The Writing Rainbow, where teachers prepare children for writing by modelling the ideas, grammar, or techniques of writing.

Writing units start with experiences and exposure to model texts to generate ideas, vocabulary and understand the writer’s craft. Sentence stacking lessons are organised into three ‘learning chunks’ to gather vocabulary, model the ‘writerly thinking’ behind the process, and enable pupils to craft their own sentences, building to a plot point paragraph. Pupils are encouraged to consider the intent and ideas in their writing and consider their vocabulary and writing choices to achieve this.

Independent Writing

Pupils apply their learning from the sentence stacking lessons to a new task based around the text/genre. They plan ideas, vocabulary and techniques needed and write independently, using examples of sentences structures and generic features they have learnt. Pupils are given the opportunity to practice writing in a range of styles and genres across KS2.

Editing

Pupils are encouraged and prompted to reread and check their work for sense and accuracy in both sentence stacking and independent writing.

Support and Challenge

The working wall in the classroom and the structured explicit nature of lessons, as well as use of classroom resources such as word mats and sounds mats support weaker writers. More able writers are encouraged to ‘deepen the moment’, and to extend detail in the sentence stacking lessons and in independent work, using their knowledge of the writing rainbow.

Impact

The impact of our English curriculum on our children is clear: progress, sustained learning and transferrable skills. By the end of KS2, pupils can read a range of age-appropriate texts accurately, with understanding and enjoyment. By the end of year 6, most genres of writing are familiar to pupils and teaching can focus on creativity, writer’s craft, sustained writing and manipulation of grammar and punctuation skills

In order to measure the impact of our curriculum effectively, we use a two-tier approach to assessment. Firstly, teachers use formative assessment to identify where pupils need support or challenge and next steps in learning. Secondly, through summative assessments, we make more formal records of the children’s learning against age-related expectations and exemplification materials. We use NFER assessments, and the end of KS2 SATs, to monitor the children learning against national standards and expectations. We use the Acorn Assessment of Writing materials to ensure that our writing judgements are consistent and accurate. We also use No More Marking, which is a comparative judgement assessment tool used to measure children’s writing ability against a large national sample.

By having such a continuous cycle of assessment, we can ensure that we meet our ambitions and that children leave us with the skills, passion and knowledge necessary to continue to excel in their secondary education. We hope that, as children move on from us to further their education and learning, that their creativity, high aspirations and passion for English stay with them and continue to grow and develop as they do.