English
INTENT
At St James’, our intention is to teach a rich, balanced and progressive curriculum within English, which caters for the needs of all individuals. We aspire to instil a love of language and literature in all children, through exposure to a wide range of rich texts that acts as both models and inspiration for reading and writing. We want our pupils to leave our school having acquired all the necessary skills in reading, writing and speaking and listening to be able to access, and flourish in further education at secondary school, and life outside of school.
IMPLEMENTATION
We have adopted the HIAS phased learning journey model to successfully develop readers as writers. This model works effectively to build the necessary skills and increase pupils’ engagement, making writing and reading experiences as connected, purposeful and meaningful as possible.
Individuality and creativity with writing is celebrated and this promotes a positive attitude towards writing. Vocabulary is a strong focus in each journey, as well as children’s speaking and listening skills being developed through many creative and hands-on experiences.
English Working Walls are used successfully in each classroom to support children with their ‘Writing Ingredients’; the key ingredients in order to make their particular writing successful. Children regularly articulate these key ingredients and understand the purpose of, and impact on, this knowledge and skills on their writing. Teaching and learning is carefully planned in order to support and challenge all pupils.
We promote a love of reading and celebrate books. Each class uses the school library, and enjoys daily ERIC (Everyone Reading In Class) time. Children regularly read to adults at school through Guided Reading sessions, Phonics sessions and one-to-one reading. Early reading and spelling (phonics) is delivered through a validated systematic synthetic phonics programme in Early Years and KS1.
Through our teaching, we continuously monitor pupils’ progress using ongoing formative and diagnostic assessment to inform discussions in termly pupil progress meetings and update summative assessment.
IMPACT
As a result of our English teaching at St James, you will see children who are engaged with their learning and are challenged appropriately. The children enjoy reading and writing, and are enthused by the text drivers used during each writing journey. Children at our school love books, and parents regularly comment on their children’s love of reading. The children are confident to talk about their writing journeys and books they have read, and can articulate their learning.
Key learning is revisited and opportunities are planned for children to build on existing knowledge and skills which ensures that what is taught goes into the children’s long-term memory.
The children at St James show a high level of pride in the presentation and understanding of their work.
Please click on the links below to view our progression of knowledge and skills in reading and writing.
Click on the links below to view our writing long term overviews and text drivers for each year group.
