At Starbank, our English policy and practice 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 pupils to experience educational success. We believe in an engaging and cohesive English curriculum that gives pupils 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 develop pupils’ mastery of spoken language, reading, writing and vocabulary. We strive to continually reflect on and refine our curriculum design, so our pupils enjoy their learning and make substantial and sustained progress in English, throughout year groups and across all subjects.

​

The curriculum design nurtures pupils who read easily, fluently and with enjoyment and depth of understanding. Pupils also progress into effective, not formulaic writers as they learn about how writers use language and words to impact on the reader and use them as models for their own writing.

High-quality and rich texts underpin our English curriculum and are at the heart of nurturing a love for reading in our pupils and purposeful writers.

Through language and literature, we value and celebrate diversity and encourage pupils to develop knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live.

At Starbank, a systematic synthetic phonics programme (SSP) delivered through Read, Write Inc RWI), shared reading in years 2 to 6, DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) individual/group reading tutoring and independent reading is integrated to create a comprehensive and cohesive reading curriculum to develop enthusiastic, autonomous and perceptive readers

Whilst children are learning to read in EYFS and KS1, there is full fidelity to the Read, Write Inc SSP with pupils using only RWI decodable books. Once pupils exit the RWI programme, they progress onto books within our selected reading scheme: Oxford Reading Tree. As pupils progress further into confident and very fluent readers, they have access to a wide range of texts. This instructional teaching of reading is against a backdrop of access, throughout the school years, to a wide range of books to read for pleasure using Star Readers and class libraries

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 pupils to become fluent and effective writers. In Reception and KS1, children are taught to blend sounds to read and segment to spell through daily phonics sessions. At the same time, they learn words which are not phonetically regular (common exception words). In year 2 and KS2, the pupils build upon their phonic knowledge to help them to understand spelling rules and patterns introduced which are then continually practised. We teach pupils to use their growing understanding of the morphology and etymology of words to support their spelling.

English Curriculum Map