Aims
Through our teaching of English we aim to equip our pupils with the skills and knowledge to thrive throughout their lives. We aim to foster a life-long love of literature and an ability to communicate in speech and writing, allowing our pupils to capitalise on all the opportunities life presents to them.
We aim to use the English curriculum to challenge, develop and inspire resilient pupils who are capable of tackling challenging texts. Pupils who are inspired by notable authors from different eras and cultures, pupils who can read and write with empathy and pupils who can speak their mind articulately using evidence, justification and an ever expanding lexicon.
To develop our pupils as speakers and listeners we:
To develop our children as readers we:
To develop our children as writers we:
Reading and Phonics
English is central to all learning, and indeed to life. Children need to develop the capacity to use the English language in all its forms.
Our school reading scheme from Reception to Year 6 is Collins Big Cat. EYFS & KS1 use Big Cat: Letters and Sounds alongside a range of phonetically decodable books to provide range and balance, which allows children to use books that focus on practising reading with fluency.
We use Supersonic Phonic Friends to teach daily phonics in EYFS, Year 1 and Year 2.
The Phonics Scheme is designed for Year R, Year 1, Year 2 and for some children in KS2 who would benefit from extra support. It aims to build children's speaking and listening skills in their own right as well as to prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills. It is a fully systematic, synthetic programme for teaching phonic skills. Supersonic Phonic Friends also enables children to apply their phonics within their writing, further embedding their phonetic understanding and enabling our children to develop as readers and writers with the use of the phonics scheme.
Use the link below for more information on our Phonic Scheme.
The whole school took part in a virtual author visit, with writer Dara McAnulty. Dara talked to us about the inspiration for his non-fiction book about the outdoors and nature, called "Wild Child", what it is like to be an author and how he goes about the process of writing. Thank you, Dara, for sharing your time with us!