At Chopwell Primary School, we are proud to offer our pupils a rich environment where imagination and creativity can be fuelled. We believe that literacy and communication are key life skills.
Intent
At Chopwell Primary School, we follow the National Curriculum objectives for English. Our intention is to ensure that all children can express their ideas confidently, both verbally and in writing, in preparation for their next steps in education and future career.
Through our text-based English curriculum, children are taught to understand and appreciate a range of different text types, as well as developing their cultural, emotional and social understanding. Our curriculum provides opportunities for children to develop their reading, writing, speaking and listening skills by widening their vocabulary, developing sentence structure and ensuring children have a secure phonics knowledge. We aim to provide children with the knowledge they need to become proficient within the spelling, grammar and punctuation for their year group by ensuring that these elements are taught rigorously and children understand their importance. By the time they leave Chopwell Primary School, we want all children to have a good understanding of a range of text types, are able to discuss these confidently and all children can replicate these successfully in their own writing.
Teachers ensure that all children understand the importance of having pride in their work and in English this is highlighted through our handwriting scheme, Letter-join. Handwriting is a basic skill that influences the quality of work throughout the curriculum. At the end of Key Stage 2, all pupils should have the ability to produce fluent, legible and joined handwriting, and are able to identify different forms of handwriting which are used for different purposes. We encourage parents and carers to use the Letter-join resources at home to support their child with their handwriting.
We aim to provide an enjoyable and inspiring English curriculum that encourages and promotes imaginative thinking, celebrates children’s successes and leaves children with a lifelong love of the English language and literature.
Implementation
English is taught daily at Chopwell Primary School. The National Curriculum objectives are taught through a book-based curriculum, focused on sharing high-quality texts with rich language, grammar and sentence structures from Years 1-6. Texts are carefully selected to ensure that they meet key objectives for each year group and build on prior knowledge. Each unit aims to explore the book in depth. An overview of the high-quality texts covered can be found in the writing section of our website.
In addition to the daily English lessons, Years 1-6 also complete at least one cross-curricular piece of writing every half term. This aims to follow up on objectives covered in English lessons, but allows children to apply these elements in a different context. An overview of the cross-curricular writing covered in each year group is available on our website.
In Years 2-6, spelling is taught daily. Teachers plan spelling lessons based on the spelling patterns covered in the National Curriculum. In addition to their phonics sessions (see below), children in Year 1 learn specific spelling patterns through the high quality texts that they are exposed to. Children in Years 2-6 are given weekly spelling to practise at home and are tested on these weekly. Teachers will ensure children are spelling these words correctly in their independent writing and will use results from the tests and spellings across their work to support individuals.
Handwriting is a cross-curriculum objective and is taken into consideration during all lessons. Formal teaching of handwriting is to be carried out regularly and systematically to ensure Key Stage targets are achieved. Handwriting is taught from Nursery to year 6. In Nursery, children are encouraged to form print letters correctly through their phonics sessions. Printing letters is developed further in Reception and Year 1 as we begin using Letterjoin resources. Progression in handwriting continues in Year 2 as children are introduced to a cursive style of writing using Letterjoin. In Key Stage 2, children continue to build on producing fluent, consistent and legible cursive handwriting, applying size-appropriate handwriting to all areas of the curriculum in order to improve their quality, speed and stamina for writing.
Impact
The impact of our English curriculum at Chopwell Primary School is evident in the children’s engagement and interest in lessons. Teachers ensure children are given time to talk through their ideas, share and evaluate as a class. This allows teachers to quickly assess how well children are meeting the objectives of the lesson and where support or stretch is needed.
At Chopwell Primary School, children are provided with immediate feedback from teachers and are able to make improvements to their writing in the moment. Through formative assessment, teachers are constantly reviewing planning and ensuring that lessons are delivered at the appropriate level and differentiated accordingly to support and challenge all learners to ensure all pupils make accelerated progress. Termly, children are assessed against their year group objectives in reading and writing and this is monitored by the English Lead and discussed with teachers in Pupil Progress meetings.