At Kelbrook, we believe that English is at the heart of the curriculum and holds an essential place in society. A high-quality English education ensures that children will leave us equipped with the tools they need to succeed in whichever path they choose in life. Through exploring a range of literature, they will be learn to be effective communicators and have the opportunity to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually.
Aims
The overarching aim for English in the national curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment. The national curriculum for English aims to ensure that all pupils:
- read easily, fluently and with good understanding
- develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
- acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
- appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
- write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
- use discussion in order to learn; they should be able 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.
Spoken Language
Spoken language and the ability to communicate is vital for pupils’ development in all areas and underpins the learning of both reading and writing. At Kelbrook, we want to give pupils the best start to their education as possible. Spoken language is developed through discussions with teachers in reading and writing sessions. We also utilise Talk Boost to support pupils in EYFS who have difficulties speaking and understanding.
Reading
At Kelbrook, we endeavour to foster a love of reading in all of our pupils. We believe that a genuine love of reading will equip our pupils with the desire to learn and, in turn, develop skills they will need to be successful members of society beyond school. Our pupils’ journey to become competent speakers, readers and writers starts with the teaching of systematic synthetic phonics. We have a strong emphasis on phonics during the early years of school and we understand that it is vital to create competent readers. We use the Red Rose phonics programme to teach phonics and this learning is reinforced through our selection of phonically decodable reading books. Comprehension skill are developed through high quality discussions with teachers and each other as well as from reading and discussing a range of stories, poems and non-fiction. We know that reading a wide range of texts and reading regularly is the key to expanding our pupils’ vocabularies and we focus on this during all areas of English teaching.
Writing
Our English curriculum is centred on a selection of quality texts from a range of genres to inspire children to write. Alongside these key texts, we link non-fiction texts and poetry to provide a broad range of learning opportunities. Talk 4 Writing is utilised by teachers to aid children in imitating high-quality language orally before reading and analysing it and then writing their own versions. We want to help children to develop the confidence, tools and imagination to become imaginative and effective writers. The ability to write down ideas fluently and accurately relies on effective spelling. We have developed our teaching of grammar to ensure that teaching is sequenced logically and ensures progression following the I-model. At Kelbrook, we use Letter-join as our whole-school handwriting scheme, using a cursive style to teach our children how to form letters. This starts during EYFS once pupils’ fine motor skills are developed and they are ready to write.
