English

 INTENT

At Pensby Primary School we believe that a quality English curriculum should spark and develop children’s love of reading, writing and discussion. It is our aim that children from all backgrounds are exposed to a vocabulary-rich environment from a very early age, engaging them in a wide range of speaking and listening activities that inspire all children to be confident in the art of discussion and communication. Designed and delivered through high-quality literature, our curriculum focuses on engaging and vocabulary-rich texts that signpost wider curriculum opportunities and embody our whole school approach to reading and writing. With a wealth of writing opportunities, our English curriculum recognises the importance of nurturing a culture where children take pride in their writing and can write clearly and accurately, adapting their language and grammatical style for a range of contexts and with increasing confidence.

IMPLEMENTATION

Phonics forms the foundation of early reading and writing, through Read, Write Inc and children enjoy daily discrete phonics lessons with opportunities to read in every lesson. Children are assessed regularly and high quality, targeted support ensures children progress the programme comfortably. During writing lessons, through Read to Write, children are  given opportunities to develop their language skills orally, learning new and appropriate vocabulary and language features which are relevant to each genre. After practising them verbally, they then progress to using these skills in their writing. Collaborative work, drama and model texts are used to inspire children to be ‘authors’. Teachers follow the’ immerse, analyse, plan and then write’ sequence, supported by beautiful, high quality picture books.  In addition, children learn specific grammatical features which enhance the quality and sophistication of their writing.

Children are also taught how to both plan and edit their writing to gain competence in structuring their work effectively. Children observe how an expert (teacher) models the thought process of sentence construction through regular ‘sentence accuracy’ tasks, whereby children build up a bank of high quality sentences to use and adapt in their own work. In order to embed the application of all these skills, knowledge and understanding of writing learnt during their writing lessons, the children are also provided with opportunities to write in different contexts and for a variety of purposes in each subject across the curriculum.

IMPACT

The impact of our English curriculum is that children leave Pensby Primary School confident in the acquisition of both written and spoken language. That they are inspired by a curriculum that is driven by high-quality literature and meaningful reading, writing and grammar opportunities. The  progression of skills and knowledge are organised to allow children to consolidate and deepen their knowledge of books, grammatical terms and the structures of a range of genres of writing, including poetry. Children will leave Pensby Primary as thoughtful, reflective and articulate individuals who are able to communicate their opinions, their ideas and their emotions in a wide range of spoken and written ways. They will have developed an understanding of the importance of reading both to acquire knowledge and for pleasure/enjoyment.