English
English Intent
Penny Bridge CE Academy aims to provide a broad, balanced curriculum which is relevant to and widens the experiences of our children to prepare them for the challenges they will face and inspire a love of knowledge, learning and life.
Literacy is the gateway to success and the backbone of every subject. By speaking and listening, reading, or writing, it allows children to express themselves creatively and effectively and is crucial in enabling children to engage successfully in society. At Penny Bridge CE Academy, we want to ensure all our pupils become competent speakers, readers and writers who are able to transfer these skills to every subject and to let their light shine across the curriculum.
Our English curriculum creates fluent readers, confident speakers and willing writers. It integrates phonics with comprehension, writing, grammar, spelling and handwriting, using engaging partner work and drama. Read Write Inc. ensures that phonics progression is covered systematically.
Our whole school approach to English provides complete coverage of the aims of the National Curriculum and incorporates a thematic approach with high quality texts at its core to engage and enthuse children in their learning.
Key Concepts in English
- Development of spoken language
- Reading- word reading and comprehension
- Writing- transcription (handwriting and spelling) and composition
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Implementation
Books are such powerful and wonderful tools which harness so many opportunities. Not only do they offer a wealth of information, experience and knowledge; they also provide opportunities to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. High quality texts can improve comprehension, vocabulary, spelling, speaking, listening, and writing. They offer so many benefits, and it is because of these benefits that Penny Bridge CE Academy School have adopted a completely book-based approach to the teaching of English and have placed it at the very heart of our curriculum.
One pupils have completed the RWI phonics programme, the pupils at Penny Bridge CE are taught English through the Literary Curriculum. Prior to this we ensure EYFS, Year 1 have writing weeks following chosen books from the Literacy Tree. The Literary Curriculum, designed by the Literacy Tree, is a book-based approach to the teaching of Primary English that places children’s literature at the core. Read Write Inc is used until children become fluent and confident readers from this the Literary Curriculum immerses children in a literary world through the planning sequences (for writing), the literary leaves (for reading), therefore creating strong levels of engagement to provide meaningful and authentic contexts for primary English.
Children become critical readers and acquire an authorial style as they encounter a wide-range of authors and a variety of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Throughout their time at Penny Bridge Ce Academy, pupils will explore over 100 literary texts and experience many unique significant authors.
To ensure this curriculum is embedded throughout the school, pupils receive an English lesson as well as a whole class reading lesson, with a different book to focus on in each. Each half term focusses on a different theme, with links made to the wider curriculum where possible to allow pupils to explore the theme in as much depth and breadth as possible.
We follow a spiral approach to learning which allows pupils to learn and revisit the different strands of the National Curriculum several times throughout each year. This spiral approach to learning provides complete coverage of all National Curriculum expectations for writing composition, reading comprehension, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary, as well as coverage of additional spelling and phonics – all in context.
Pupils have access to a diverse range of books both in their classroom reading areas and in the school library which they can read in school and even take home. Reading areas in classrooms promote high quality texts that often link to the theme being studied. Our library monitors ensure the library book banded organisation is kept organised.
Impact
The impact on our children is clear: progress, sustained learning and transferrable skills. With the implementation of the writing journey being well established and taught thoroughly in both key stages, children are becoming more confident writers and by the time they are in upper Key Stage 2, most genres of writing are familiar to them and the teaching can focus on creativity, writer’s craft, sustained writing and manipulation of grammar and punctuation skills.
Termly assessment show that most children at Penny Bridge CE Academy are achieving in English at age-related expectations. Each year we have children achieving at a greater depth in reading and writing at the end of KS1 and at the end of KS2. We hope that all the planned English initiatives will enhance children’s learning and ensure progression from their starting points.
As all aspects of English are an integral part of the curriculum, cross curricular writing standards will also improve and skills taught in the English lesson will be transferred into other subjects; this shows consolidation of skills and a deeper understanding of how and when to use specific grammar, punctuation and grammar objectives. Our well thought out writing and reading plans should embed this further.
We hope that as children move on from Penny bridge CE Academy to further their education and learning, that their creativity, passion for English and high aspirations travel with them and continue to grow and develop as they do.
Children are assessed through a variety of different methods: small assessment tasks, retrieval practice, low-stake quizzes, classroom responses and teacher judgements alongside formal methods of assessment.
Leaders monitor teaching and learning through child voice, parental questionnaires as well as book looks and learning walks and using the online app SeeSaw to record evidence of learning. The development of the children in school is also monitored through daily informal conversations.
As a result of our whole curriculum, we expect to see all children achieve well by developing knowledge and skills across the curriculum. This is demonstrated through outcomes at EYFS, Phonics (Key Stage 1), Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2.
- Children will develop lifelong learning behaviours.
- Our children will be able to understand, appreciate and success in modern Britain. Our children will develop a lifelong love of learning through our vision and drivers.
- Our children will be responsible global citizens and courageous advocates through the Christian Values we have instilled in them during their time in school.
- All children will leave our school, fully equipped for the next stage in their learning