English at Harmans Water:
It is imperative that children receive excellent teaching of English. Without the skills and knowledge learnt through this subject, children will be prevented from accessing the rest of the curriculum – as well as the wider world. We aspire to allow children to demonstrate their creativity and resilience at all times, with English being no different. Our cross-curricular approach helps foster these school values, through the exciting and engaging varied stimuli we use to support this subject.
Our English curriculum is based around key texts, texts to be read across the curriculum and through a range of writing opportunities across varying text types. Please see below for our overview from Nursery to Year 6.
Reading
Here at Harmans Water Primary School, our aim is to develop a life-long love and passion for reading, and for children to leave here as confident readers. The teaching of reading begins as soon as children enter our school in EYFS (please see the separate page about phonics). Our reading aims are as follows:
- Develop enquiry skills through reading for different purposes.
- Develop resilience when learning to decode, retrieve and infer texts.
- Develop a range of reading strategies in addition to decoding to allow children to access a range of literature.
- Inspire children to read a wide variety of authors through the use of high quality texts.
- Develop an appreciation for reading, both inside and outside of school.
- Engage all children across the school through an exciting reading curriculum.
- Gain the confidence to perform a range of texts.
- Enable children to become passionate about reading, emphasised through events like World Book Day.
Please see below our progression of the teaching of reading throughout the school and the progression of the key concepts.
Reading for Pleasure
In addition to the teaching of reading, we ensure we make time for children to foster their love of reading too. Each class holds a weekly Book Club session, where favourite books are discussed, new books are explored and other reading-related activities occur, depending on what the class choose.
We also have a read aloud spine, where the teachers read these books in their daily story time. These books have been selected as high quality texts and enables us to expose the children to a range of authors by the time they leave our school in Year 6.
Each year group has a reading challenge list. These are high quality books that we recommend each year the children read in their own time, with the option to access these books in school too. These range from graphic novels to poetry and non-fiction.
As well as the bookcase and/or book corner in every classroom, the children have a weekly visit to our library. We have a newly designed Reading Meadow that children can access at lunchtimes and when teachers decide to use it with their class.
We celebrate and take part in reading events each year, like World Book Day, to ensure we prioritise the importance of developing a love for reading.
Writing
The teaching of writing relates closely to the teaching of reading and projects through our Cornerstones curriculum. Our writing curriculum has been designed in order to:
- Empower children by giving value and meaning to their mark making.
- Develop the thoughtfulness and imagination of young writers across the curriculum.
- Inspire children’s creativity through the high quality texts and authors studied to support their writing.
- Build children’s confidence through the understanding of manipulating grammar and punctuation within their own writing.
- Develop pride and ownership for presentation of pieces the children have worked hard on and engaged with.
- Support and increase children’s ability to reflect critically, looking at their own, others and authors’ pieces.
Children from Year 1 are also given the opportunity to take part in 'free writes' where they can write freely and explore language, vocabulary, sentence structure and different text types independently.
We have designed our writing curriculum to ensure children move through three phases of writing: an introduction to the writing unit and experiences that link to this, writing with scaffolded support from an adult or whole class shared write, and then a chance to write independently, incorporating everything learnt through the two phases before. We give children real-life purposes for their writing, encourage creativity and imagination, and provide opportunities for writing across the curriculum. Children publish their final pieces in writing portfolios, which then follow the children through the school and showcases their writing journey.
Handwriting
The teaching of handwriting begins in Nursery, with the encouragement of the tripod grip and mark making beginning here. As the children move through Nursery and into Reception, the children develop their gross and fine motor skills, before then learning how to form letters in the printed form. At this age, we encourage the use of the Read Write Inc (RWI) rhymes, as these match what is being taught within phonics lessons.
Handwriting is taught as a separate session from phonics, and is taught in every year group. From Year 1, we use the Nelson Handwriting Scheme. The children use exercise books that support with letter size and formation, and all children focus on printed letter formation until they are ready to join, which is anywhere from Year 2-Year 4. In Reception and KS1, handwriting is taught daily. In Years 3 and 4, handwriting is a few times each week, and one longer session is taught weekly in Years 5 and 6.
Spelling
EYFS and Year 1 focus on the high frequency words, alongside phonics, when teaching spelling. Years 2 - 6 use the Jane Considine approach to teaching spelling each week. Our aims with spelling are:
- To enable children to communicate effectively with others through the ability to spell a range of vocabulary.
- To have the confidence to attempt unfamiliar, high level vocabulary, using spelling strategies in addition to phonics.
- To be able to apply knowledge of suffixes and prefixes to alter meaning.
- To understand how to apply spelling rules to a range of words and make links between them.
Children are also given a personalised spelling list to learn, which supports them with the words they are currently developing their accuracy with.
Oracy
Oracy is interweaven between the other strands of the English curriculum, as well as within other subjects, across the school. Our aims are to:
- Prepare children with the ability to present confidently their ideas, opinions and thoughts across a range of subjects
- Develop a rich vocabulary during formal and informal language development opportunities.
We feel it is important that every child is heard, and that they have the opportunity to develop their speaking and listening skills, whether it is through exploratory and/or presentational talk. Activities and throught-through tasks in lessons support with the development of Oracy skills.