English Curriculum

 

It is our intention when teaching the English curriculum that our pupils acquire the necessary knowledge, skills and understanding to become lifelong learners. We strive to ensure that all our pupils receive a well-rounded learning experience when reading, writing, speaking and listening which will equip them with the fundamental tools to achieve in their school years and beyond. It is our intention to immerse pupils in the wonders of quality texts to instil a love for reading, a passion for discovery and a confidence to explore their imagination through high quality texts.

 

Intent:

  • Our aim is to ensure that every child becomes a reader, a writer and a confident speaker by the time they leave Fringford Primary School.
  • To promote and instill a love for reading, writing and high quality literature into pupils of all ages.
  • To derive an English curriculum which sequences to develop the acquisition of knowledge and skills.

 

Implementation:

  • Our English curriculum is derived around a sequence of high quality age-appropriate texts. The curriculum is designed so that CLPE Power of Reading books create opportunities to develop reading fluency and comprehension with a focus on key reading strategies and skills; develop grammar and punctuation knowledge and understanding.
  • Our English curriculum is designed so that there are opportunities to use and apply their skills across the wider curriculum; explore the writing structure and features of different genres, identify the purpose and audience; plan and write an initial piece of writing with a clear context and purpose before evaluating the effectiveness of writing by editing and redrafting.
  • We use the CLPE Power and Reading and Cornerstones to link the curriculum and this encourages pupils to express their ideas, discuss and to develop more sophisticated vocabulary.
  • Our pupils are encouraged to read for pleasure and to read widely through our reading scheme and school library. Every day they have an opportunity to ‘Drop Everything and Read.’
  • We use Floppy’s Phonics – which is a rigorous, easy-to-use systematic synthetics phonics programme that engages children from the outset and enables them to learn to read quickly. Developed by Debbie Hepplewhite, it provides our school with high quality resources for effective and consistent phonics teaching. Floppy’s Phonics is in line with the Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) teaching principles described in the ‘English programmes of study: key stages 1 and 2 – National curriculum in England’ which is statutory from September 2014. The Floppy’s Phonics programme teaches the letter/s-sound correspondences of the English alphabetic code explicitly and comprehensively for reading and spelling. It is a method for teaching reading and writing by developing learners’ phonemic awareness – the ability to hear, identify and manipulate phonemes – in order to teach the correspondence between the sounds and the spelling patterns (graphemes) that represent them. The goal of phonics is to enable beginning readers to decode new written words by sounding them out, or in phonics terns, blending the sound-spelling pattern.
  • Our whole class guided reading sessions cover a wide variety of both fiction and non-fiction books and help advance the children’s comprehension skills.
  • We develop writing skills so that our children have the stamina and ability to write at the age expected standard.
  • We provide varied and exciting opportunities for writing for purpose and we encourage pupils to see themselves as authors and poets.
  • Handwriting sessions are regularly incorporated into English lessons. We use the Letter Join handwriting scheme.
  • From Year 2 – Year 6, we use the No Nonsense Spelling scheme and children keep spelling journals which they take home daily.
  • To promote English we participate in a range of reading and writing activities: World Book Day, reading challenges and the use of reading raffles.

 

Impact:

  • We strive to ensure that our children’s attainment is in line or exceeds their potential when we consider the varied starting points of all our children. We measure this using a range of materials, whilst always considering the expectations for each year group.
  • Children are able to read early and develop a love for reading through hearing a variety of stories, poems and rhymes.
  • Children will make at least good progress in Reading, Writing and Speaking and Listening from their last point of statutory assessment.
  • We intend the impact of our English curriculum will ensure our pupils are academically prepared for life beyond primary school and throughout their educational journey.
  • We believe that through the book-led approach we have developed for the pupils of Fringford, that pupils foster a love for reading and an interest in reading for pleasure.
  • We also strive to ensure that pupils work hard to ensure that children will be able to produce written work in all areas of the curriculum of a similar standard.

Further Information