English

English

English at St Mary's

"Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow."

Lawrence Clark Powell

Intent:

To build an English curriculum which develops learning and results in the acquisition of knowledge and skills. Our curriculum is designed with appropriate subject knowledge, skills and understanding in speech and language, reading and writing as set out in the National Curriculum. At St Mary's, we have designed our wider curriculum to provide regular opportunities for pupils to apply the speaking, listening, reading and writing skills they have acquired from the English curriculum. We provide opportunities across curriculum areas for the development and application of speaking, listening, reading and writing skills so that children can know more, remember more and understand more to help them reach their potential at our school and beyond.

Implementation:

National Curriculum Programmes of Study and Schemes of Work:

Foundation Stage - English is planned for following the EYFS Framework.
Key Stage One and Key Stage Two - English is planned for following the National Curriculum objectives. Our immersive curriculum is based on high-quality texts, with appropriate Lexile scores, for each year group.
Whilst the National Curriculum forms the foundation of our English curriculum, we ensure that children learn additional skills, knowledge and understanding and enhance our curriculum as appropriate to meet the needs of our children.

Language, Speaking and Listening:

The promotion of a language rich curriculum is essential to successful acquisition across the curriculum. Therefore, the promotion and use of accurate and rich cross-curricular vocabulary throughout school is planned in all subjects. This is evident in all learning areas, classrooms and is a key part of our immersive curriculum Knowledge Organisers.
The promotion and implementation of tiered language across the curriculum provides the tools for children to make links across subjects so that they know more, remember more and understand more.
Children are given a wide range of opportunities to use and develop their Speaking and Listening skills to help them with the writing process across all areas of the curriculum.
The development of speech and language is identified as early as possible, and Speech and Language therapy is provided for pupils who require this intervention.
A Speech and Language Champion in school is currently being trained to provide bespoke speech and language support to pupils as required.

Writing:

All children write daily.
St Mary's plan writing in English lessons linked to quality reading texts, with appropriate Lexile scores for each year group, linked to our immersive curriculum. Genres, such as description, instructions, narrative and poetry writing, are used as vehicles to cover the National Curriculum English objectives.
Opportunities for children to apply their writing are planned through the wider curriculum.
Writing is assessed as appropriate every term when key skills can be applied in a meaningful way and next steps identified by the teacher, and also through self and peer assessment. Assessment of writing is through grids compiled by the school based on the National Curriculum objectives for each year group.
Children have writing targets that are applied through English writing and wider curriculum writing.
Children are taught to write in a pre-cursive handwriting style from Year 1, and are taught to join in a cursive style as soon as all letters are accurately formed. However, exceptions are made according to the specific needs of particular children.
School sets high expectations on handwriting and presentation across all curriculum subjects.
Pupils are taught spelling patterns and spelling rules according to year group National Curriculum English expectations.

Impact:

Children will make at least good progress in speaking, listening, reading and writing from their last point of statutory assessment or from their starting point in Foundation Stage 1. Children will use their English knowledge and skills in all curriculum areas, and produce written work of the same standard across subjects, to enable them to know more, remember more and understand more to help them reach their potential at our school and beyond.