English

Our English Curriculum forms part of our overarching topics and themes and is designed to nurture a love of literacy and develop high competency of language skills. Our wide and varied curriculum teaches students the skills needed to be proficient communicators in the real world, via a range of different genres. Our Primary English curriculum is rigorous, progressive and enables pupils to be fully prepared for further study in the Secondary phase.

Our curriculum introduces students to a full range of literary and non-literary texts from a wide range of cultures and time-periods, thus developing their understanding of how language and literature reflect the world within which they were written, and how language reflects the identities and contexts of the writers.  The English curriculum contributes significantly to the wider curriculum of the school and remains a focus when teaching other subjects. This enables students to keep a constant focus on developing communication skills and their understanding and proficiency in using the written and spoken words. 

Teachers are sensitive to the needs of students with English as a Second language and appropriate strategies and programs are implemented to ensure that the gaps in language skills are closed as quickly as possible.

We hold several theme days relating to Language and Literacy across the year such as World Book Day and House Vocabulary Day and we nurture the fun and excitement that comes with all aspects of English learning and develop lifelong readers,

In the Early Years Foundation Stage our students learn early literacy skills and develop the foundations of reading and writing which will last them a lifetime. Early phonics skills are taught and students begin to read and write simple sentences.  Learning opportunities are planned through structured play, based on the seven areas of Learning in the EYFS.

In Key Stage 1, learning opportunities are planned through story journeys incorporating objectives from the National Curriculum. These themes include Defeating the Enemy and There and Back again. Students build on their knowledge of stories and write for a range of purposes applying these skills within continuous provision where opportunities are created to link their learning to real life situations.

In Key Stage 2,  story journeys include Achieving the Impossible and Chaos to Calm. Throughout KS2 the students move from decoding words to interpretation. Our students leave KS2 as fluent, confident readers. The students develop their stamina for writing by applying the skills they have learnt to extended pieces of writing in a wide range of genres using characters, dialogue and high level, imaginative vocabulary.