English Curriculum
English has a pre-eminent place in education and in society. All the skills of language are essential to participating fully as a member of society; pupils, therefore, who do not learn to speak, read and write fluently and confidently are effectively disenfranchised.
A high-quality education in English will teach pupils to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them.
Spoken language underpins the development of reading and writing. The quality and variety of language that pupils hear and speak are vital for developing their vocabulary and grammar and their understanding for reading and writing.
Reading and literature in particular play a key role in both our children’s cultural, emotional, intellectual, social and spiritual development and their acquisition of knowledge.
Our Curriculum enables pupils to develop their speaking, reading and writing abilities. It facilitates pupils to gain an enthusiasm for all component areas of English. Through Literacy Counts: Ready Steady Write we offer a progressive, spiral curriculum. While there are opportunities for children of all abilities to revisit and master key skills and knowledge in each teaching unit, the planned progression built into our English curriculum means that our children are increasingly challenged as they move through the school.
Additional focus areas, such as: School Shakespeare Week, Votes for School and World Book Day all contribute to our school-wide approach to developing an appreciation of English as an essential subject.
Phonics
We teach phonics using the Systematic Synthetic Phonics Programme: Twinkl phonics programme which has been verified by the Department for Education.
Reading
Our reading scheme includes Rhino Readers, Oxford Reading Tree which are phonetically decodable. We also use Project X and other schemes. We also have book banded books to ensure continuity, progression and breadth for those children who achieve the automaticity required to move away from phonically decodable books.
Whole Class Reading Sequence KS2
In KS2, we teach Reading through whole class reading sessions using extracts from Complete Comprehension. Underpinned by research from the Education Endowment Foundation, we have designed a sequence which enables pupils to become readers who experience new vocabulary and a wide range of texts, build a growing knowledge of question types (Inference, Prediction, Summarising and Retrieval) and develop an understanding of how to approach and answer such questions. We dedicate lessons to:
- Developing vocabulary.
- Reading, rehearsing and understanding extracts from high-quality texts.
- Understanding question types and techniques.
- Reading on.
Writing
At Our Lady’s Bishop Eton we teach writing through comprehensive units that have been carefully constructed so the entire statutory curriculum for English is covered from Year 1 to Y6. Ready Steady Write empowers teachers to provide high-quality teaching of writing through high-quality literature. Each unit of work centres on engaging, vocabulary-rich texts, with a wealth of writing opportunities within and across the curriculum and they also signpost wider curriculum enrichments.
Read to write provides a consistent approach to the teaching of writing across the school using these key features:
- Clear Sequential Episodes of Learning
- Example Texts (greater depth WAGOLL)
- Vocabulary Learning
- Contextualised Spelling, Grammar & Punctuation
- Writer’s Knowledge Linked to National Standards
- Sentence Accuracy Works Linked to National Standards
- Progressions Documents with Year Group Expectations
- Reflecting on Unit Outcomes: Planning for Next Steps
- Example Planning Format
- Wider Reading for the Wider Curriculum
- A Wealth of Resources Linked to the National Standards
- Explicit Links to the National Curriculum Read to Write is evidence-based teaching of writing.
Teaching Sequence:
