English

Reading, writing, speaking and listening are fundamental life skills. At Starbank, our comprehensive English curriculum is rooted in a sound understanding of the essential role of a high-quality education in English to continually nurture those skills of language that are vital in enabling each one of our children to experience educational success. We believe in an engaging and cohesive English curriculum that gives children the best possible opportunities to become confident, literate, successful members of society; with a deep love and understanding of English language and literature.

We aim to provide an engaging and cohesive English curriculum to develop children’ mastery of spoken language, reading, writing and vocabulary. We strive to continually reflect on and refine our curriculum design, so our children enjoy their learning and make substantial and sustained progress in English, throughout year groups and across all subjects.

Reading

Our intent is to:

• Nurture children who read easily, fluently and with good understanding at an age-appropriate level.
• Embed early reading skills so that children become fluent, functional and purposeful readers through a systematic, synthetic phonics programme (Read Write Inc).
• Develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information.
• Drive acquisition of a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading.
• Deliver a comprehensive and cohesive reading curriculum that permeates the curriculum to develop enthusiastic, autonomous and perceptive readers.
• Ensure our reading curriculum facilitates mastery of a wide range of reading skills children need – from strategies for decoding to understanding themes in a longer novel.
• Model the reading process to the whole class as an expert reader.

Phonics – Read, Write Inc

• In EYFS and Key Stage 1, we use Read, Write Inc. as our systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme.
• Starting in Nursery and Reception, children are taught how to recognise the sounds that each individual letter makes, identify the sounds that different combinations of letters make and then blend these sounds together from left to right to make a word. Children can then use this knowledge to ‘decode’ new words they hear or see.
• Children in Reception and Key Stage 1 have a daily phonics session as part of a robust offer to teach and embed early reading skills.
• Children take home a decodable RWI book which they have read in school.
  

Once children have mastered word reading, the development of comprehension skills becomes the principle focus. In Key Stage 1, this initially centres on the basic retrieval of key information in texts, before moving onto developing the ability to read between the lines and draw simple inferences and conclusions from texts. In Key Stage 2, these central comprehension skills of retrieval and inference are then developed further through the use of a broader range of more complex and sophisticated texts. Additional comprehension skills such as comparing, summarising and predicting are also developed.

Children also have access to the following reading opportunities to develop the skills of reading:

• One-to-one reading with an adult using a book that is closely matched to their reading level
• Regular independent reading – Drop Everything and Read (DEAR)
• Class story/novel
• Paired reading with peers
• Class/school library book offering a range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts
• Engagement with the Star Readers’ initiative designed to promote the joys and benefits of reading to all of our children
• A range of non-fiction literature – First News
• Application of reading skills across the curriculum
• We also share and discuss a range of high-quality books during our English lessons to develop a love of reading and broaden their vocabulary. This includes a range of poems, stories and information books.

Writing

Our intent is to:

• Design and deliver a curriculum focused on effective and accurate writing – composition and transcription – to nurture purposeful writers.
• Develop children’s ability to produce well structured, detailed writing; in which the meaning is made clear and which engages the interest of the reader.
• Nurture skilled writing from our children with effective composition which involves forming, articulating and communicating ideas, and then organising them coherently for a reader.
• Drive acquisition of a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for writing.
• Develop children who have the stamina and skills to write at length.
• Develop effective not formulaic writers.
• Pay close attention throughout the school to the formal structures of English, grammatical detail, punctuation and spelling both explicitly and in context, which is instrumental for mastery and greater depth in English.
• Ensure all our children master the spoken and written word to communicate clearly.
• Children leave Year 6 being able to write with confidence and control for a range of different purposes – using a range of independent strategies to take responsibility for their own learning including self-monitoring and correcting their own errors.

At Starbank, we believe that grammar is most effective when taught in the context of reading and writing and supported by discrete sessions. Therefore, alongside discrete grammar sessions from Year 2 to Year 6, teaching and learning of grammar is planned into the English teaching and learning sequence within meaningful contexts.

We recognise the importance of spelling to support our children to become fluent and effective writers. When spelling becomes automatic, children are able to concentrate on the content of their writing and the making of meaning. We recognise that confidence in spelling can have a profound effect on the writer’s self-image.

In Reception and Key Stage 1, children are taught to blend sounds to read and segment to spell through daily phonics sessions using our SSP: Read Write Inc. At the same time, they learn words which are not phonically regular (common exception words).

In Year 2 and Key Stage 2, the children build upon their phonic knowledge to help them to understand spelling rules and patterns introduced which are then continually practised. We teach children to use their growing understanding of the morphology and etymology of words to support their spelling.

Progression in handwriting, as outlined in the National Curriculum 2014, is timetabled on the curriculum each week. To support our teaching of handwriting, staff refer to resources linked to the Letterjoin Handwriting Scheme.

Reading and Writing through our book-led English Curriculum

• English units of work are rooted in rich texts in EYFS, Key Stage 1 and a class novel in Key Stage 2 which act as a stimulus for the writing sequence. A range of texts may be used throughout and alongside the main text.
• Our novel-based approach is defined by planning longer sequences of learning to teach text types in greater depth. We aim for our pupils to be secure in the text types taught so they can write them in any context with confidence. To support this, the pre-writing phase immerses pupils in the chosen text to ensure children fully know and understand the book.
• Class novels are carefully selected to represent good quality literature which will challenge our children at a far higher conceptual level and expose them to increasingly challenging texts that demand more of them.
• The class texts and novels also offer children a rich reading diet that feeds their imagination, develops their empathy as readers, includes cultural diversity and fosters a better understanding of the world around us; in doing so we build on their cultural capital.
• Supplementary texts and extracts also hold a valued place in our reading and writing provision to expose children to exemplified texts.

The long term plan:

Spoken Language

At Starbank, we recognise the importance and power of spoken language in English and across the curriculum and strive to design a curriculum in which it underpins reading and writing. We believe that to be able to write competently, our children need to articulate themselves confidently. We therefore encourage pupils to develop their ability to use Standard English at every opportunity. We promote children’s ability to explain their learning in every lesson and believe this leads to a deeper understanding.

Through authentic contexts and a wide range of opportunities including role-play, story-telling, drama, discussion and debate, we aim to:

• Provide a range of authentic contexts, audiences and activities which encourage children to develop confidence and competence in speaking and listening.
• Develop childrens’ awareness that different situations require different forms of oral expression and how to manipulate language for different purpose and audiences.
• Provide opportunities for children to internalise language patterns and develop the mechanical skills required for effective oral communication, e.g. voice projection, tone, clarity and pace of speech.

For children who require additional support in speaking and listening, we draw upon the expertise of a Speech and Language therapist to deliver weekly sessions.

Inclusion

At Starbank, we believe that all pupils can achieve their reading and writing potential. Through adaptive strategies, e.g. the use of additional teacher models, guided work, vocabulary support, technology, peer support and a personalised curriculum, we strive to ensure that all our pupils are able to fully access our exciting English curriculum.