English

Intent:

At Leys, we provide an engaging and inclusive English curriculum that aims to inspire a lifelong love of reading and writing. Children are encouraged to read and write across a wide range of genres and for different purposes, developing their imagination, creativity and confidence as readers and writers.

Teachers support children to express their thoughts and ideas clearly and creatively through the written word, while also developing essential skills in grammar, punctuation, spelling and composition. We place a strong emphasis on the writing process, teaching children how to plan, draft, edit and improve their work with a clear understanding of audience and purpose.

Oracy is embedded throughout our curriculum to support children in becoming articulate and confident communicators, enhancing their writing and learning across all subjects.

Implementation:

During our English topic we work through the key knowledge and skills required to independently achieve the end reading and writing outcome. These are thoroughly planned and discussed to ensure all children have the knowledge and skills to be fully immersed into the chosen text. The skills and knowledge are teacher assessed to strengthen accuracy of teacher judgements and are used to develop curriculum.

Throughout the topic, children are immersed into the chosen text, experiences are planned accordingly and allow our children to gain the knowledge needed on a deeper level. Oracy runs throughout each topic ensuring all voices are heard; listened to; therefore, continually gaining all knowledge and skills needed.

Within the English topic, the skills taught are purposeful and allow for children to apply these skills in relation to their given topic and not stand-alone lessons. Children will text mark and be shown WAGOLLs (What A Good One Looks Like) whereby they are able to identify all features; knowledge and skills acquired throughout. The children are then given the opportunities to create their independent writing outcome; where they follow the process of planning, drafting, editing, reviewing and publishing. This is modelled and scaffolded as necessary to ensure consistency and set expectations.

Whilst immersed into their writing topic, children are taught there is an audience and purpose to all the types of writing they will write. The purposes of writing are repeated across the key stages through a range of writing outcomes to solidify understanding of text types and to enhance skills in grammar, punctuation and sentence construction. These purposes are to inform, to persuade, to entertain, to discuss, to describe, to perform, to instruct and to explain.

Throughout the writing process, children are encourage to edit and peer assess their work. KS1 pupils are encourage to make simple edits and additions in their writing. They are able to notice simple errors and correct these accordingly. In KS2 children are encourage to still make edits and peer assess, but is more focused on a skill or knowledge that has been taught throughout their writing process.

Grammar and Spelling are taught using a combination of resources. We provide discrete grammar and spelling lessons through the week but importantly take every opportunity to incorporate these essential skills and rules to all aspects of writing in lessons from across the curriculum, where we believe it is learned and understood best in practice.

The Nelson Oxford Handwriting scheme is used across the school.  We place a high level of importance on children’s awareness of writing for different purposes. Pupils are taught about writing which is appropriate for planning or drafting and that which is to impress. Expectations are high as it it is a basic form of communication which is often the first impression that people make of us.

Impact:

Children are engaged and motivated readers and writers who take pride in their work, making thoughtful choices in language and presentation. They develop strong reading and writing skills that support learning across the curriculum and enable a confident transition to secondary school.

Writing is imaginative, well presented and rooted in strong ideas, with ambitious vocabulary and effective use of figurative language. Through a clear understanding of the writing process, children make strong progress, with many achieving age-related expectations or beyond, and develop the confidence to communicate clearly and effectively.

Reading is a pleasure for our pupils. They are fully immersed in a variety of texts throughout their school years. Authors are studied; texts are dissected and discussed; our pupils are able to make communicate effectively regarding texts they have read. Through being exposed to many different texts; genres and genres our pupils continue to read for pleasure and make great progress in their reading.

As with the whole of our curriculum, we have identified key knowledge, skills and experiences, which we want pupils at Leys Primary School to experience throughout their time with us. Underpinning these is a commitment to facilitating and promoting opportunities for spiritual, moral, social and cultural experiences as often this is where the greatest degree of meaning and fulfillment is experienced. To find out more about this, please see the documents above, or alternatively, open the SMSC tab for the complete document.

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The subject of English is amongst the most dynamic across the school. Every opportunity is taken to embrace language and literature. Examples of this are the highly successful event days such as World Book Day, Roald Dahl Day, or National Poetry Day. We also hold semi-regular author visits and book signings, plus the annual Scholastic Book Fair which provides a huge amount of book resources for our school community.

We participate – and have previously won - the Barking and Dagenham borough Poetry Competition and have had finalists celebrated in the National Writing competition: Wicked Young Writers. There is much to enjoy within this subject area.

Thank you for taking the time to read the above.