English
English
Intent
At Mickley, our aim is to provide a creative, engaging curriculum that provides boys and girls with opportunities to write across the curriculum in a variety of genres. Planning creates exciting hooks so that pupils are inspired to write at length, improving their handwriting, spelling and composition. We aim to improve reading fluency and comprehension across the year groups so that children develop a love of books and read for pleasure. We also provide opportunities throughout the curriculum for children to develop speaking and listening and increase their confidence when performing.
Rationale
The purpose of English in the National Curriculum is to teach pupils to write and speak fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them. Our curriculum aims promote high standards of literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word and to develop a love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment.
Implementation
At Mickley First School, English is taught daily in key stage 1 and 2. Pupils learn to read and write through a variety of high-quality fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts and classrooms provide a language-rich environment throughout school. Pupils are also given opportunities to consolidate their writing skills in other subject areas. This might be writing results to a science experiment, producing a newspaper report about the Great Fire of London or writing a letter in the style of Christopher Columbus.
Phonics is taught discretely following the Letters and Sounds programme. There is more information on our reading page. Spelling, punctuation and grammar is taught regularly through the English units of work.
We focus on developing our pupils into confident, fluent and independent readers. Our school reading scheme draws from a range of schemes to capture the range of abilities and interests of our pupils. Our reading scheme and library encourages pupils’ independence in choosing the texts that they wish to read at their ability levels. We teach the children comprehension skills through whole class teaching, small group work and individually as required.
We provide lots of opportunities for children to develop their speaking and listening skills through the English curriculum and other subject areas. Pupils are regularly encouraged to share their opinion and point of view and also given the chance to perform to a wider audience through school performances and other live shows / concerts.
Impact
Our key stage 1 reading results have been above National average for the last 3 years. Our children also achieve above the expected standard in the Year 1 phonics screening test.
We monitor progress and attainment in reading, writing, spelling and speaking and listening. Any children who are not making the progress that we expect are given timely interventions to enable them to make the progress they are capable of.
Click here to view the full National Curriculum Programme of Study that we follow for English.