The English Curriculum is separated into Reading, Writing and Speaking and Listening as well as English Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling. On this page, you will be able to find out more about how we teach each aspect of English and how our curriculum for English works together. You will be able to access the English Policy and Curriculum Overviews as well as other useful documents and examples of how this is put into practise in our school.
Intent
At St. Luke’s Church of England primary school, our vision for teaching and learning in English is that all pupils are inspired to read, write and communicate confidently and fluently, with good accuracy, understanding and expression. We strive for all children to develop good listening skills and that they can apply their language skills across all curriculum areas.
Through our English teaching, we aim to support and challenge all pupils to make good progress by planning engaging lessons, inspiring interests and fostering a love of reading and writing that will last into later life. We believe it is important that all children develop positive reading habits which in turn, inspires their speaking and listening skills as well as their written work. We encourage children to use a wide range of vocabulary at all times so that our classrooms are ‘language rich’ environments where the children all have a positive attitude to developing their own language skills. We offer a creative and inclusive curriculum which inspires, engages and challenges the children through practical activities, discussion, planning and editing to foster independence across the curriculum.
Implementation
Reading
We take a varied approach to the teaching of reading as we recognise that each child is individual and will learn best differently to others.
In order to foster a love of reading, teachers will: read to the class from a class text daily,
base learning in English writing lessons around the themes from the class text, choose a text that links to the class topic, select books that are of high quality and are ‘vocabulary rich’ and model good reading habits and discuss books with the children.
Our curriculum separates the teaching of reading into two key areas:
Reading accurately (fluency and decoding) and understanding (comprehension of texts).
In order to make sure that all pupils make progress in both of these key areas, children are taught in a number of different ways.
In EYFS and KS1, early reading skills will be taught through daily phonics sessions. Our phonics teaching is delivered through the ‘Bug Club Phonics’ SSP. Children will be assessed regularly and intervention and support will be given wherever needed by class teachers and teaching assistants. We aim for intervention to be delivered on the same day wherever possible. To support their learning in Phonics, children will take home and read fully decodable books matched to their learning from the Bug Club scheme and staff aim to listen to each child read in school each week.
From Year 2, children will participate in whole class reading comprehension lessons at least three times a week. During this session, children will be taught the skills needed to answer different question styles based on the different reading domains outlined in the national curriculum. Teachers will ensure that these sessions cover a wide range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry and that each child is appropriately challenged suitable for their age and level of reading fluency.
Writing
Each class teacher will aim to cover a wide range of writing genres across the year. The children are encouraged to write creatively and apply their grammar, punctuation and spelling learning into independent writing. Wherever possible, writing outcomes will be linked to either the whole class text, or the current foundation subjects' topic. By linking writing to other areas of learning, we aim to encourage the use of high level and technical vocabulary as well as engaging the children in the subject matter they are writing about.
Children will be encouraged to share ideas before a piece of writing and may work collaboratively to plan a piece of writing. Children will also be taught to edit and improve their written pieces before publishing or performing their completed work.
English grammar, punctuation and spelling are all highlighted as important aspects of the writing curriculum. In order to best help our pupils to make progress in these areas, children at St. Luke’s Church of England Primary School will take part in daily lessons working on these objectives, as well as working on them during our English lessons. Based on the National Curriculum and the Essentials Curriculum, we have set out our own learning overview for English Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling to best meet the needs of our learners.
Impact
Formative assessment of reading will be carried out daily by class teachers, who will respond to individual needs and provide challenge during each reading session with all children.
Reading will be assessed summatively 6 times a year (at least one each half term).
In Autumn 1, Spring 1 and Summer 1, the children from Year 2 onwards will complete their individual reading assessments using the PM Reading Benchmarks Reading Assessment Resources. This scheme will allow each child to work 1:1 with an adult who will assess them for both Reading accurately and understanding. The outcome of the assessment will determine each child’s reading book band level and therefore home reading books and guided reading groups. This also allows class teachers to track progress against the book bands for each child.
In Autumn 2, Spring 2 and Summer 2, the children will undertake a written comprehension assessment. These will be used to assess the level the children are working at against the National Curriculum Standards. These will also follow the format used in the Year 6 SATs papers to help prepare the children for these National tests. Alongside this, Class teachers will regularly complete Teacher Assessments using the Depth of Learning recording system. These assessments are combined to provide a full picture of each child’s development in reading.
At the end of each writing unit, the children will undertake an independent Gold Write. Teachers will use this independent write to assess their skills and knowledge. Following the Depth of Learning assessment scheme, writing will be assessed against the following criteria: Write with purpose, imaginative description, organisation, paragraphs, sentences, presentation, spelling, punctuation, analysis and present writing.
Teachers will formally assess written work against these outcomes each half term but will use the Gold Write to inform planning and intervention for each pupil.
The English Policy outlines how the English Curriculum is planned, taught, learnt and assessed at St. Luke's. It separates the English Curriculum into the different strands that make up teaching and learning of English.
Our Long term overview shows the Key texts for reading, the writing genres and EGPS topics that will be covered in which year groups and at which points during the year.
These documents detail the knowledge and skills that are to be taught in Reading, Writing and Speaking and Listening in each year group.
This document lays out the new vocabulary that will be introduced to each year group in Reading, Grammar Punctuation and Spelling. It explains what the children should understand and be able to use be the end of each year group.