Intent
At Batley Parish CE Academy, English sits at the heart of our curriculum – it is through language, story and text that children learn to form concepts, connect ideas and express themselves. Through the varying dimensions of literacy, children learn to both make sense of the world and shape their place within it.
We believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach reading through Read Write Inc, a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Reception and follow the Read Write Inc progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.
Through the teaching of reading and writing, we place a heavy emphasis on developing a child’s vocabulary and love of reading. We value reading as a key life skill and we are dedicated to enabling our pupils to become lifelong readers. Ultimately, reading is key for academic success. By the time children leave Batley Parish in Year 6, the limited vocabulary that they arrived with in Reception, will have expanded vastly, giving them the language they need to understand increasingly difficult texts and express themselves in a wide range of contexts.
We recognise the importance of nurturing a culture where children take pride in their writing, can write clearly and accurately and adapt their language and style for a range of contexts. We want to inspire children to be confident in the art of speaking and listening and encourage them to use discussion to communicate and develop their learning.
We believe that children need to establish a secure knowledge-base in English, which follows a clear pathway of progression, as they advance through the primary curriculum. Securing these skills is crucial to a high-quality education and will give our children the tools they need to participate fully as a member of society.
Implementation
Our intent is embedded across our English lessons and the wider curriculum. We have a rigorous, systematic phonics scheme in place, to ensure all children are taught how to read. Our English curriculum provides many purposeful opportunities for reading, writing and discussion and we use a wide variety of quality texts and resources to motivate and inspire our children. Teachers also ensure that cross curricular links are woven into the programme of study.
At Batley Parish, we encourage our children to make links within and across different texts and other curriculum subjects, to develop a deeper understanding of the English curriculum and transfer new skills across all lessons.
Teachers plan and teach clearly-sequenced English lessons, which are adapted to meet the particular needs of each child. We help each child maximise their potential by providing help and support where necessary whilst striving to make children independent workers once we have helped to equip them with the confidence, tools and strategies that they need. We identify any children who require additional support and provide intervention in the most effective and efficient way that we can to ensure no children are left behind.
We love to celebrate success of all learners and strive to help all children achieve their goals. English is celebrated in classrooms and around school, where our wonderful displays celebrate children’s writing, their favourite books and their reviews and thoughts on books they have read.
In order to achieve our aims, our children have the opportunities to:
- practise and embed foundational knowledge e.g. letter formation, spelling, handwriting
- use and apply new skills through carefully dictated sentences
- easily, fluently and with good understanding, reading a range of different text types and genres.
- 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; our children should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas.
- speak and listen, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debates.
Impact
With a well-established English curriculum, the impact should be clear: progress, sustained learning and transferrable skills. The impact across the English curriculum should demonstrate:
- A love of reading built within a book-rich environment.
- Pupils enjoy reading and are exposed to a broad range of texts and authors.
- Successful readers are nurtured through the good teaching of both language comprehension and word reading.
- Pupils are secure with foundational knowledge before they proceed with complex tasks.
- Pupils have a good range of vocabulary that they are able to use in discussions and apply in their writing.
- Pupils have a good knowledge of how to adapt their writing for different purposes and audiences.
- Pupils have a solid foundation in spelling and have a toolkit of different strategies to support the continual learning of new spellings.
- Pupils are able to identify, use and apply grammatical features in their writing effectively across the curriculum.
- An expectation for our EYFS children to achieve ELG in Literacy and Communication and Language.
- An expectation for children to achieve national standard in the phonic screening check.
- An expectation for children to achieve national national standard in reading and writing, both at and above age-related expectations.
Downloads
Links
You can find more information about our reading and writing teaching in the links below: