English Overview

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Our Curriculum Intent for English

At Little Leigh Primary School, we value reading as a key life skill and ensure reading is a fundamental part of what we do. We place reading at the heart of the curriculum by carefully selecting language rich, high-quality texts that are used as a vehicle for learning within and across the curriculum.

By exposing our children to widespread literature, pupils have the chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually, as well as deepening their curriculum knowledge in a range of subject disciplines. This knowledge enables our children to become confident communicators, readers and writers– skills which will prepare them for their future.

All writing lessons are carefully sequenced to allow our children to develop their skills, by adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. Teachers provide a wealth of writing opportunities that give children the opportunity to practise and apply learnt skills throughout the curriculum.

Our children will leave us having had the opportunity to master skills in speaking, reading, and writing that will prepare them for secondary education and life beyond the school gates.

Our Curriculum Implementation

Reading

We follow a Mastery approach to Reading through the programme Pathways to Read. Pathways to Read provides a clear teaching sequence to reading sessions that explicitly teach reading skills and strategies in a cumulative way through evidence-based approaches. This approach ensures that all aspects of word reading and comprehension are taught through high-quality fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts. The units of work also provide curriculum knowledge for foundations subjects such as history, geography and science.

Each reading lesson follows a clear structure that includes an opportunity for teacher- led instruction and modelling, time for children to practise and independent application.

Through these sessions, the children develop their reading comprehension skills around vocabulary, retrieval and inference, prediction, explanation and summarising across a range of genres. We value the importance of the explicit pre-teaching of vocabulary so that our children don’t stumble on unknown words, allowing them to have a better understanding of the text. Once they have an understanding of the text, they are encouraged to think more deeply about how language has been used to create different effects – a skill which they can later draw on in their writing.

Reading for pleasure

At Little Leigh Primary, we are passionate about reading for pleasure as this itself plays a major role in reading development. Our teachers are readers and share their love of reading with their children in a range of ways, including daily class reads and making book recommendations. Teachers ensure the children have time for independent reading every day and each classroom has an inviting reading area, resourced with ‘top picks’ and books linked to topics.

Writing

We follow a Mastery approach to English through the programme ‘Pathways to Write.’ Units of work are delivered using high quality texts and children in all year groups are given varied opportunities for writing. Skills are built up through repetition within the units, and children apply these skills in the writing activities provided. Many opportunities for widening children’s vocabulary are given through the Pathways to Write approach and this builds on the extensive work we do in school to provide our children with a rich and varied vocabulary.

You will find the end-of-year expectations for writing, reading and spoken language for each of our year groups in the attached documents below. For further detail on the skills that your children are learning on a termly basis, please contact your class teacher.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary is a strong indicator of reading success (National Literacy Trust, 2017). We know from research that the size of a child’s vocabulary is the best predictor of success on future tests. Children with a poor vocabulary at five are four times more likely to struggle with reading in adulthood (Why Closing the Word Gap Matters: Oxford Language Report, 2018).

At Little Leigh, we value the importance of the explicit pre-teaching of vocabulary so that our children don’t stumble on unknown words, allowing them to have a better understanding of a text. We also know that a good understanding of a wide range of vocabulary supports success across the whole national curriculum, therefore new vocabulary is carefully selected and explicitly taught to the children, developing their vocabulary bank in English and across the curriculum

Discrete Teaching of Spelling

At Little Leigh, we teach spelling daily through our Phonics scheme (ELS) in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2.

From Year 3 to Year 6 we teach spelling 3 times a week using Ready Steady Spell.

Discrete Teaching of Handwriting

At Little Leigh, we use 'Letter-join' to support the teaching and learning of letter formation and joins. Please see below our new and revised Handwriting policy

Our Curriculum Impact

At Little Leigh, it is clear that pupils enjoy reading regularly - pupils discuss books with excitement and interest. They enjoy writing and use the features of different genres and styles. Pupils can confidently write for different purposes and audiences.

Half-termly, teachers moderate pupils work in school and in cluster meetings with other schools to ensure accurate assessments are made. The quality of writing in English and Discovery books is evaluated by learning walks, drop ins, pupil voice and book scrutinies. These inform teachers' planning for the coming term.

Each half term, children complete an NTS (National Test Style) standardised reading assessment. These assessments help us to appraise the impact of our curriculum, whilst also informing teachers' planning.