English

Curriculum Intent

Reading

At St George’s, we believe that all pupils should have the opportunity to be fluent, confident readers who are able to successfully comprehend and understand a wide range of texts to support our vision of ‘Life in all its fullness.’ We want pupils to develop a love of reading, a good knowledge of a range of authors and be able to understand more about the world in which they live through the knowledge they gain from the high quality texts we provide in our library. By the end of their time at primary school, all our children should be able to read fluently and with confidence, in any subject in their forthcoming secondary education. We do not put ceilings on what pupils can achieve in reading and we do not hold pre-conceptions about any pupils’ ability to make progress.

All of our children will have access to a reading book that is aligned to their reading ability ‘A book I can read’ along with a book which interests them, ‘A book I can share.’ We understand the importance of parents and carers in supporting their children to develop both word reading and comprehension skills, and so we encourage a home-school partnership which enables parents and carers to understand how to enhance the skills being taught in school through good quality texts.

We follow Letters and Sounds from Little Wandle Letters and Sounds as our phonics scheme. The KS1 reading books follow this scheme so that the books they bring home as 'A book I can read' are aligned to their phonics learning and fully decodable.

Writing

We believe that reading and writing are interconnected: reading is breathing in, and writing is breathing out. We strive for children to learn to love books through daily storytelling sessions, in which books have been carefully chosen by the class teacher to engage and inspire, supporting our vision of ‘Life in All Its Fullness.’ This will widen their vocabulary and give them a bank of ‘techniques’ from successful authors.

English writing topics are based on stories by quality authors and the children are given time to immerse themselves in the story and get to know the characters and story format. Sequences of learning focus on building up age appropriate writerly skills before embedding in an extended purposeful piece of writing. Assessment for learning through these extended pieces will enable teachers to incorporate planned repetition of key skills, where gaps have been identified, into their sequence.