English
English Overview
English Curriculum Intent
It is our intention when teaching the English curriculum that our pupils acquire the necessary knowledge, skills and understanding; becoming lifelong learners and linguists. 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 our school 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 our book-led curriculum.
English is a core subject of the National Curriculum and a prerequisite for educational and social progress, as it underpins the work undertaken in all areas of the curriculum. The acquisition of language skills is of the upmost importance to us and therefore the teaching of all aspects of English is a high priority within school. Confidence in basic language skills enables children to communicate creatively and imaginatively, preparing them for their future journey through education and beyond.
Aims:
- To ensure that every child becomes a reader, a writer and confident speaker by the time they leave St Botolph’s C of E Primary School.
- To promote and instil a love for reading, writing and high-quality literature into pupils at all ages.
- To develop an English curriculum which sequences to develop the acquisition of knowledge and skills.
Writing Curriculum
At St Botolph’s C of E Primary School, it is our aim to provide pupils with a high-quality education in English that will develop pupils' ability to speak, read and write with great fluency, master the mechanics of both reading and writing and develop a love and a true interest for English so that they can communicate their thoughts, ideas and emotions effectively.
Writing is an integral part of our curriculum. All children from Foundation Stage to Year 6 are provided with numerous opportunities to develop and apply their writing skills across the curriculum. It is our intention that pupils develop a clear understanding of the writing process in order to establish themselves as an author in their own right.
Through our book-led curriculum, we foster pupils' interest in writing and offer a reason and context for writing, which enables the children to write for purpose and audience, as well as broadening their exposure to high-level vocabulary and grammatical features. We work to ensure that vocabulary and sentence structure is given a high priority so that children can write for a range of purposes well.
Pupils are taken on a writing journey, which builds their knowledge of writing for context and purpose, allowing opportunities for them to explore a variety of genres and to plan, draft and re-draft their writing. In order to establish this, pupils will develop their knowledge of genre features, audience, language and effective composition.
Pupils are taught to control their speaking and writing consciously, while using correct Standard English.
Reading Curriculum
At St Botolph's we believe that it is paramount that all children read well and enjoy their reading. We first teach children to read using our Sounds-Write programme (see separate page) and then they read to learn via our reading canon and exposure to texts in the wider curriculum. By careful selection of texts by our team, we ensure that our children read widely and tackle challenging texts daily to increase their reading miles.