The teaching and learning of English are fundamental to ensure every pupils’ success as a life-long learner and well-rounded citizen. Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening skills are explicitly taught at every phase of a pupils’ education. At our school, we believe that developing reading, writing, speaking and listening skills discreetly in English lesson, as well as embedding these within all curriculum subjects is essential.

Intent

At Milking Bank Primary, we strive to deliver an exciting and engaging English curriculum which provides all children with the key literacy skills they will need, whilst enabling creativity and progression across the year groups. We believe that a quality English curriculum should develop children’s love of reading, writing and discussion and expose them to a variety of high-quality texts and stimuli, as well as frequent, purposeful opportunities to practise and review key skills. Our curriculum aims, are underpinned by those in the National Curriculum for English, recognising that through the study of literature, children are able to explore the beauty and power of language and gain an understanding of the ‘human experience’, equipping them with essential life skills. Through our English practice, we strive to enable all children to.

· read easily, fluently and with good understanding

· develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information

• be exposed to a range of good quality texts, in order to develop a love of reading and a good knowledge of a range of authors, which will enable them to understand more about the world in which they live through the knowledge they have gained from texts.
• acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
• write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting language and style for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
• use discussion in order to learn, showing an ability to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas
• are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate.

Implementation

Phonics

We begin teaching reading with a focus on systematic phonics. Our aim is to offer the strongest phonics teaching, which is taught consistently in EYFS and KS1 through ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised’. This ensures that pupils’ make the strongest start so that their confidence in reading can be built upon year after year. These comprise of learning different graphemes, focussing on oral and aural phonological skills and sight vocabulary. During these sessions children are also explicitly shown how to apply their developing skills to their writing. All children are grouped in accordance to their individual needs and are in phase appropriate groups. We aim to ensure that pupils are ready for the next stage of their progressive reading journey through explicit teaching and timely intervention using the Little
Wandle  Catch Up programme.

Reading

At Milking Bank, we regard the teaching of reading at the centre of everything that we do. Reading forms a pivotal part of our curriculum. Beyond early reading, where our rigorous approach to phonics ensures children begin their reading journey with fluency and accuracy, pupils progress to the Little Wandle Fluency Programme. This aims to build fluency and create confident readers for life in Year 2 and upwards.

In Upper Key Stage 2, when reading with fluency, children delve into a wide range of texts during whole class reading sessions and time allocated to reading for pleasure. Texts are chosen with consideration of the 5 Plagues of Reading approach from Doug Lemov, which plots the progression and complexity of reading across the curriculum. It involves five types of text that children should have access to in order to successfully navigate reading with confidence:

• Archaic language – to expose readers to more complex texts and vocabulary, with texts written between 50-100 years whose vocabulary, syntax and context for culture are more complex than modern stories.
• Non-linear time sequence – stories where time flows back and forth in a complex manner and does not flow in one direction.
• Narratively complex – the narrator can sometimes be unreliable; at times there may be more than one narrator.
• Symbolic texts – some texts use metaphor and images whilst others convey an allegorical manner. Where the plot and symbols used are more complicated, eg, interwoven plots.
• Resistant texts – where texts are deliberately difficult to comprehend. The reader has to assemble meaning around nuances, hints, uncertainties and clues.

During whole class reading sessions, pupils develop a range of reading skills to develop their comprehension. Through in-depth discussions, opportunities to read aloud and more formal questioning, we aim to support children as they learn through reading and appreciate a variety of texts.

Home reading is enthusiastically encouraged and is an integral part of the child’s development. In order to have strong communication between teachers and parents/carers, each child has a pupil planner, where both the staff and parents can write comments about how the child is progressing with his/her reading.

Daily reading for pleasure in the classroom is encouraged and a weekly ‘Book Talk’ time is timetabled. Reading challenges are regularly offered within school and pupils are encouraged to undertake the annual county library reading challenge. An annual book week is held along with a book fair to further promote reading.

Writing

We recognise the importance of fostering a culture where pupils take pride in their writing; write clearly and accurately; and modify their structure and language choices to suit a variety of audiences, purposes and contexts. Some of the high-quality texts that are studied in depth, provide a platform from which children develop their own writing skills. Other writing stimuli include the use of film and imagery; modelled, shared and guided writing; peer-to-peer and group discussion. These rich and varied set of learning opportunities support pupils in becoming confident and enthusiastic writers for life.

To develop our children as writers we:

• treat children as writers, from the earliest stage, who have ideas that they will want to communicate, building on writing skills they have acquired and their knowledge of print from their environment
• provide experiences where the children can acquire confidence and a positive attitude to writing.
• develop and sustain writing skills by providing opportunities for children to write for a range of purposes and audiences.
• use guided writing sessions, sometimes using a ‘Talk for Writing’ approach, to model writing skills, teaching children how to compose, amend and revise their writing.
• teach children to become critical readers of their own writing by using self-evaluation and checking their work independently for sense, accuracy and meaning.
• teach grammar and punctuation in the context of children’s own writing, as well as through discrete lessons.
• teach children to develop their ability to organise and present imaginative and/or factual writing and poetry in different ways.
• teach strategies for spelling to enable children to become confident and competent spellers.

Handwriting

Handwriting begins in the EYFS with mark-making and patterns. All pupils are given access to a wide range of writing tools and mediums to practise the early fine motor skills. The needs of left-handed children, or those with physical difficulties are also taken into consideration and where necessary accommodated with resources or specific intervention.

The whole school follows the Kinetic Letters approach, which develops four strands of handwriting: Making Bodies Stronger; Learning the Letters; Holding the Pencil; and Flow and Fluency.

Impact

We measure the effectiveness and impact of our English Reading, Writing, Grammar and Spelling Curriculum in a variety of different ways. We use national and summative testing to assess pupils' outcomes for Reading and Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling as part of the Statutory Assessment Tests (SATs for Year 6 pupils) and through termly summative assessments from Year 2 upwards, which enables pupils' progress and attainment in the subject matter to be evaluated. Additionally, teachers assess reading and writing on a termly basis and enter teacher judgements onto our internal assessment system. The impact of the curriculum can be seen through pupils' national assessment results. 

Through lesson and pupils' book monitoring, it is evident that pupils are being well supported to acquire the necessary skills and subject knowledge in order to become established and confident readers and writers and work monitored in books demonstrates that the curriculum is taught at an age-appropriate standard across each year group, with additional opportunities planned for pupils to demonstrate their ability to work at a higher standard. Monitoring by school leaders has identified that learning is being broken down into smaller steps and modelling supports pupils in the writing process - ensuring that the subject as a whole is regularly being reviewed to ensure learning is being embedded into pupils' long term memory.

The impact of our English Curriculum can also be measured through the acquisition of pupil voice and talking to the children about their own learning.  Pupil voice indicates that the children are enjoying their learning and can talk about the subject and curriculum opportunities.