English
Curriculum
We want every child to develop a love for reading and writing and to feeling confident in using language to explore ideas and share their voice. Talking and listening are at the heart of our learning, building strong communication skills through meaningful discussions and activities.
We explore a diverse range of stories, texts, and voices, helping children connect with different cultures, perspectives and experiences. We strive to ensure that every child makes rapid progress in the early acquisition of reading through our phonics scheme and build on this through a rich and well-planned reading curriculum. Reading is about more than just understanding words; it’s about sparking imagination and curiosity. Our writing offer provides children not only with the transcription and grammar skills to be successful but also provides the chance for every child to share their thoughts creatively and clearly, step by step, with each lesson building on the last.
By valuing creativity, strong foundations, and thoughtful progression, we help every child grow as a reader, writer, and communicator, ready to thrive in a world full of possibilities.
Reading
From reception and into the start of Year 2, children take part in a phonics programme called RWI (Read. Write. Inc.).
This programme focuses on developing knowledge of sounds so that children can decode words to read and segment words to spell. Children are also introduced to basic comprehension skills and how to read with fluency and expression. Children are assessed regularly, and grouped according to their sound knowledge and word reading.
Once children have successfully completed the phonics programme, they move onto comprehension lessons. Children continue to use many of their RWI decoding skills to read appropriate fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts. Children develop their comprehension and retrieval skills and continue to develop their wider reading skills of fluency and expression.
As well as structured reading lessons we have story-time, well stocked book corners, encourage children to take books home to read with their family and incorporate a variety of texts into other lessons of the curriculum.
We follow the Ruth Miskin Read Write Inc. program.
For further information about this program please click here.
Reading in Key Stage 2
For children in Year 3 - 6, we use the scheme Hooked on Books in our whole class reading lessons. The structure has two parts, with children experiencing both elements each week:
Book Talk
The whole class reads a high-quality chapter book using a guided oral reading model, in which children hear and read sections of texts multiple times to develop comprehension and fluency.
Comprehension Units
Children follow a three day plan, exploring an extract from a text and developing their understanding of it through a series of key activities. Explicit teaching of reading strategies such as retrieval, inferring and summarising ensure that children develop comprehension skills alongside building their vocabulary and understanding.
Writing
Key Stage 1
In Years 1 and 2, children follow our writing cycle, which usually takes two weeks. Using a high-quality text as a stimulus, children build their vocabulary and ideas over a series of lessons and work towards a writing outcome. Teachers help children to apply their developing phonics knowledge when writing, using key strategies such as 'hold a sentence' to support them.
Key Stage 2
We follow The Write Stuff scheme in writing. It's a fantastic scheme, with well-sequenced learning 'chunks' that allow children to build a text over time. With a strong focus on experiences, oracy and generating vocabulary through 'chotting', the approach supports children to develop their understanding of text structure whilst allowing opportunties for creativity in the 'independent writes' at the end of each unit.
We know that reading regularly at home supports children's fluency, pace and enjoyment of books. As a school, we pay for online subscriptions to Oxford Owl Reading Buddy so that children can access the right level of text at home. Children also borrow books from our well-stocked book corners and we regularly visit the local library too, to further develop a love of reading.
