ENGLISH

Intent

English is at the core of all aspects of learning at St Edward’s and we equip all children with the ability to develop as effective communicators through developing spoken language, reading and writing skills. Reading and literature is central to the acquisition of knowledge and we strive to develop a love of reading, whether this is through embedding quality texts in writing, shared reading or independent skills. Purpose and audience are central to effective writing and children will be given meaningful reasons to write through which they can communicate their ideas and emotions to an audience.

Implementation

Whilst on the St Edward’s learning journey, children will access a carefully planned balance between genres: narrative, information, persuasion and discussion. Throughout a writing sequence, a balanced range of activities will be offered to the children including: exploring rich texts; rehearsing technical grammatical skills and spelling rules; short burst writing; planning ideas; drafting writing; editing and proof reading and reasoning for writing.

We immerse our children in high-quality texts to instil a love for reading, a passion for discovery and a confidence to explore their imagination. We use carefully-selected, high-quality books from The Power of Reading, a CLPE programme, which allows the children to explore the text through a wide range of interactive and creative teaching approaches. This forms our first part of our writing cycle of immerse, innovate, invent. Alongside the quality text, the second and third week look at a specific genre of writing, whereby we look at model texts, annotate structural and textual features, model and share write as a class, which therefore, in turn, will lead to independent writing within our invent week. As the genres are studied in depth across these weeks, and are explored in more detail across the year groups, children become secure with knowing the features of the different genres and can also explain the effect they have on the reader. These writing skills are then transferred into writing in our foundation subjects. In addition to this, grammar, punctuation and spelling are taught weekly, in line with the National Curriculum expectations, and then are embedded within the children’s writing, through modelled and independent writing. Handwriting skills are taught weekly, using the PenPals scheme, throughout the school, whereby children learn and secure each letter formation before learning to join and then practising speed and fluency, whilst develop a personal style.

Impact

As a result of teaching the children the wide range of literacy skills throughout their journey at St Edward’s, they become creative, imaginative writers with a wide range of high-level spoken and written vocabulary. Our children enjoy creative writing and demonstrate a sound knowledge of the different writing genres they explore.

Our Literacy curriculum helps achieve our vision of Life in all its fullness by…

Mind: being motivated and challenged to continue to progress their literacy skills, whilst being able to explore their creativity and imagination.
Heart: engaging the children in high-quality stories and developing their love of writing, whilst showing empathy towards the characters they meet in the books
Body: learning about and building upon their transcription and composition skills, engaging in the writing process through a variety of drama techniques, whilst also developing their fine motor skills to form and join letters fluently.
Spirit: developing a joy for words and igniting the awe and wonder of the stories that these words can create.