English

English takes a high priority across our school. Developing confident readers and writers opens up the gateway to the whole curriculum allowing pupils to become knowledgeable, inquisitive and independent learners.

Literacy skills are high at our school and we pride ourselves in the excellent results and achievements in reading and writing. Children learn to speak confidently and listen to others. They learn to read and write independently and with enthusiasm. They use language to explore their own experiences and imaginary worlds. Areas studied in English include role-play, drama, spelling, composition, handwriting, punctuation, grammar, discussion, phonics, reading and comprehension.

Each classroom has a book area where children have easy access to a range of literature including fiction, poetry, non-fiction and topic related books all chosen to inspire and challenge pupils. Book choosing and sharing is given high priority across the curriculum as we engage our children in a vast range of literature.

Children also have regular access to our fantastic library resource and each class is timetabled to spend time in our Library, browsing, storytelling and immersing themselves in literature.

Children take home an appropriate level reading book and a sharing book. For those children still learning to read, this book is directly matched to their phonic knowledge. Parents are encouraged to both listen to their children read and also engage in story time (read aloud/paired reading) sharing other books and literature to encourage and develop reading for pleasure. Positive comments regarding achievement are written as well as stating progress through the book.

Teachers prioritise teaching the skills, techniques and strategies necessary in reading. This includes developing the phonic knowledge to read with fluency, pace and accuracy but also the comprehension skills to understand and engage in discussions around different texts. Children are constantly engaging in reading opportunities across the curriculum from our high quality text spine to science, history and geography texts.

Writing takes many forms and the children learn to write for a range of purposes and audiences. From EYFS children are exposed to a number of text types from retelling narratives to reciting poetry and writing non- fiction factual sentences.  These skills are developed and built upon throughout the years to produce narratives, persuasive texts, chronological texts, poetry and many more.  These genres form our writing spine embedding key text types across the curriculum.