English
“The joy of teaching English is that what you get is so much more than what you see. Great books enable us to see through “a glass darkly”. They do not provide a photographic representation of our own lives. They use language and invention to give us a glimpse of universal truths: a sense of who we are, and what we can become.”
Sarah Hubbard, Ofsted’s national subject lead for English, November 2018
At Grove Road Primary School, we base our English teaching around high-quality texts that will transport the children to magical realms, historic civilisations and even other planets. Using these high-quality texts, from Foundation Stage onwards, we embed a love of reading within our children from an early age.
The children learn English through a range of different activities which allow them to develop their skills in speaking and listening, reading and writing. In addition to this, the children further develop their language skills through a language rich curriculum in which they will have opportunities to use topic specific vocabulary throughout all subjects.
Speaking and Listening
A great emphasis is placed on developing the children’s spoken language, as this is crucial for learning in all areas of the curriculum. This begins in the Foundation Stage where our EYFS team expose our children to a wide range of language linked to their learning around the environment.
As the children progress through the school, they learn how to communicate successfully with others and to express their ideas. The children are given the opportunity to speak in a variety of situations, for different purposes and for a range of audiences. This is achieved through presentations, debate and performances. Vocabulary is at the heart of our curriculum and the language used in Topic lessons will be referenced in spelling and writing lessons.
Reading
Our approach to reading at Grove Road Primary School is to develop fluency, comprehension and, most importantly, a love of reading. We feel that sharing stories with the children not only expands their vocabulary but also allows staff to model good story telling. We actively encourage all children to read for pleasure and enjoyment in a variety of contexts.
Each class visits the library every week to borrow a book of their choice. Our library is stocked with books from a range of genres as well as several magazine subscriptions. In addition to this, the children have access to a range of texts within their class book corners which have books linked to their current topic as well as other texts. The children also have access to electronic books on Reading Eggs.
Competency in reading is the key to independent learning. Therefore, the teaching of reading is given a high priority by all our staff.
Approaches to Reading
Shared reading: Across the school there is time every day for children to be read to. This is protected time where the children are exposed to rich, high-quality texts appropriate to their age range.
Book Talk: All children take part in reading through Book Talk sessions. During these sessions the children examine a text through different lenses. Whilst discussing each of these lenses, the children are encouraged to make direct references to the text to explain how they have come to their conclusions whilst using the text to support their answers.
In EYFS, the children take part in Picture Power each day. During these sessions the children have the opportunity to look at images based upon their learning and discuss them with the aim of improving and expanding on their current level of understanding as well as pre-teaching vocabulary linked to topic learning.
Independent reading: All children have the opportunity to take home a book every day to read with their parents or carers. Books will either be selected by staff or the children themselves based on their current reading levels. Children are encouraged to share or read a book with their parents at home every day for at least 20 minutes. Each child has a reading record book and parents are encouraged to record their reading in their reading record book.
Phonics: Our chosen phonics scheme is Read, Write, Inc. Children in Nursery begin by looking sounds within the environment, familiar sounds, beats, rhythms and rhymes as well as body percussion. The children in Reception and Key Stage One take part in daily Read, Write Inc. sessions. These sessions help to develop the children’s fluency in reading, phonetic knowledge, comprehension, writing and handwriting skills. The sessions are comprehensively planned so that the children improve their accuracy and fluency through fun, energetic and engaging lessons.
During the year we celebrate events such as World Book Day, and have authors to visit and talk to the children about how successful stories are created, where they get their ideas from and how characters are brought to life.
Writing
We encourage the children to write for a range of purposes and audiences. Staff carefully plan opportunities for children to use the writing which they have learnt in their English lesson into extended pieces of writing across the curriculum.
Our approaches to writing
English lessons encourage learning through a whole text approach. We follow CLPE’s Power of Reading and The Write Stuff approaches. These approaches offer a range of writing opportunities and a variety of high-quality texts as starting points for writing. The texts model good examples of sentences and vocabulary which act as a scaffold for the children and support different writing genres. This, combined with clear success criteria, allows the children to develop their writing skills and provides opportunities for self-editing and peer assessment. In each classroom there are English Working Walls. These working walls follow the learning journey and the skills needed to complete an independent piece of writing. They also provide additional support to the children and celebrate learning by displaying model sentences and interesting vocabulary collected by the class. Grammar is taught in context within these lessons and there is a constant focus on presentation and handwriting skills.
English Programme of Study for KS1 and KS2
