It is our intention to immerse pupils in the wonders of quality texts, to instil a love for reading, a passion for discovery and a confidence to explore their imagination.

English is a core subject of the National Curriculum and a prerequisite for education and social progress as it underpins the work undertaken in all other areas of the curriculum. The acquisition of language skills is of the utmost importance to us here at Percy Main Primary and therefore the teaching of all aspects of English is given a high priority within the school. Confidence in basic language skills enables children to communicate creatively and imaginatively, preparing them for their future journey through education and beyond.

• Our aim is to ensure that every child becomes a reader, a writer and confident speaker by the time they leave Percy Main Primary School.
• To promote and instil a love for reading, writing and high-quality literature into pupils at all ages.
• To derive an English curriculum which is sequenced to develop a clear pathway of progression through the acquisition of knowledge and skills.

Curriculum Implementation

Our English curriculum is derived around a sequence of high quality age appropriate texts. We use each book to create opportunities to develop reading fluency and comprehension with a focus on key reading strategies and skills; develop grammar and punctuation knowledge and understanding to use and apply across the wider curriculum; explore the writing structure and features of different genres, identify the purpose and audience; plan and write an initial ‘cold’ piece of writing with a clear context and purpose before planning a teaching sequence that allows the children to develop their writing from its starting point before completing a ‘hot’ piece of writing that demonstrates the effectiveness of their writing and allows them to edit and redraft.

Language Acquisition and Vocabulary Development

We endeavour to ensure we provide our pupils with a 'language rich' environment; we do this with our links to the School Library Service, which ensures we have a wide range of texts displayed around our school, to correlate with our wider curriculum. We work closely with Seven Stories and Scholastic book fairs in raising the profile of reading to ensure we share the importance of reading with our parents, carers and wider community. Within our classrooms, we explore ambitious vocabulary across the wider curriculum to ensure we acquire an understanding of tricky language across the wider curriculum through the use of our magpie areas in classrooms and our working walls.

At Percy Main Primary School, we aim to share our vision of high aspirations for all of our pupils through our high expectations across the wider curriculum; by setting these high expectations, our pupils are aware of the standards we expect in all lessons and learning opportunities.

Reading

Reading is celebrated in Percy Main Primary School. Around school, you will find displays which celebrate reading - including our champion author displays around school, inspiring reading corners and spaces, children’s favourite books, accelerated reader displays and many different book based displays.

At Percy Main, we celebrate reading throughout every phase in the school. We offer half termly visits to the Library bus which is followed by story sharing sessions with parents. Each class champions an author throughout the school year so that they really get to know that author and the authors style etc. The children are amazed when authors communicate with them through Twitter responses. Every class also has a designated reading area that is inviting and well-resourced to appeal to the children in that class.

Daily story time is a non negotiable each day with teachers choosing texts for specific reasons, such as immersing children in a topic, introducing new language, exploring new ideas, developing children’s imagination or simply to further promote a love for reading.

At Percy Main Primary School we implement a book-led curriculum across all phases. In addition, throughout the school year the importance of reading is enhanced through World Book Day, author and poet visits, Book Fairs and reading events to further enrich our English curriculum.

Reading is a high priority area of our English curriculum at Percy Main Primary School. Reading is a fundamental skill, used to stimulate children's imaginations and learn to acquire a love for books. A centralised aspect of our Book-Led Curriculum across the school, reading influences the thoughts, feelings and emotions of all of our learners. We carefully monitor the children’s reading at home and encourage parents to be fully active and engaged with us in this in order to support their child’s ongoing development.

Reading takes place at least once a week in a Guided Reading group with a teacher or teaching assistant. This is done through using the reciprocal reading modal which focuses on the key skills of predicting, clarifying language, questioning the text and summarising what has been read. If children are working below their chronological reading age, targeted intervention and support is put in place. Children in all classes still have access to story time and have a class book for a sustained period: this ensures that reading is correctly modelled to children as well as giving them the opportunity to enjoy being read to! Children in Key Stage 2 also undertake a daily accelerated reader session, using books that are matched to their ZPD. Their progress through this is evaluated by class teachers on a weekly basis (Please see Accelerated Reader policy for more details.)

At Percy Main Primary School, we use the Read Write Inc (RWI) home readers to sit alongside our phonics programme (see RWI policy). This ensures that children have a home reader that links directly with the stage of phonics that they are currently accessing. This is supplemented by the Oxford Treading Tree banded books. All children also take a library book home to promote a love of reading by giving them access to more interesting and enjoyable stories which we encourage parents to share/read to their child. In our 2 year old and Nursery provision, where children are working below the level of RWI, children take home fascinating pictures and story books without words to encourage ‘book talk’ and help to develop story language

Writing

We aim to develop children’s ability to produce well-structured, detailed writing in which the meaning is made clear and which engages the interest of the audience / reader. Particular attention is paid throughout the school to the formal structures of English: grammatical detail, punctuation and spelling. Our approach at Percy Main Primary School when teaching writing covers the transcription and composition requirements of the National Curriculum.

Throughout Early Years, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, our writing follows the Talk For Writing Book-Led curriculum. (Please see Talk For Writing Policy) Writing opportunities are sourced and developed based on the class text within each year group. Our curriculum allows Key Stage Two children to have the opportunity to explore high-quality texts in depth, enhancing reading comprehension and providing meaningful contexts and purposes for writing. The teaching of this programme is flexible and class teachers are then, in turn, able to apply their own creativity to cover the objectives across Key Stage 2.

Teachers clearly model writing skills and document the learning journey through consistent working walls; guided writing sessions are used to target specific needs of both groups and individuals. Children have opportunities to write at length, in extended, independent writing sessions at the end of a unit of work – applying their taught skills to an unsupported piece of writing.

Grammar

As stipulated in the National Curriculum, the grammar of our first language is learnt naturally and implicitly through interactions with other speakers and from reading. Explicit knowledge of grammar is, however, very important, as it gives us more conscious control and choice in our language.

Grammar lessons are taught weekly as part of our book-led curriculum and sequence of lessons. Opportunities are then provided for our pupils to apply their grammar understanding across short burst writing tasks. It is class teachers' expectations that, following the sequence of lessons to form building blocks to a piece of writing, pupils will begin to independently apply the grammar skills and content taught and embed these within their writing.

Spelling

At Percy Main Primary School, spelling is taught using the programme Spelling Shed which is a web based programme that children can access at school on 1:1 devices and at home. Spelling Shed provides a progressive scheme that ensures all children have access to planned spelling lessons with follow up activities. Spellings are sent home in each year group as part of the children’s homework; the children are then tested on these words in their weekly spelling tests.

Curriculum Impact

At Percy Main Primary School, we aim to share our vision of high aspirations for all of our pupils through our high expectations across the wider curriculum; by setting these high expectations, our pupils are aware of the standards we expect in all lessons and learning opportunities.

We strive to ensure that our children's attainment is in line or exceeds their potential when we consider the varied starting points of all our children. We measure this using a range of materials, whilst always considering the age-related expectations for each year group. Children will make at least good progress in Reading, Writing and Speaking and Listening from their last point of statutory assessment or from their starting point in our 2year old provision. We intend the impact of our English curriculum will ensure our pupils are academically prepared for life beyond primary school and throughout their educational journey.

Assessment and Reporting

Teachers use O’Track to record assessments in reading, writing and speaking and listening. This is done on a regular basis as a piece of formative assessment but no less frequent than termly as a summative assessment.

The Literacy Lead:

• Monitors and evaluates the standards of attainment and progress through termly book looks and evaluates the formative and summative data on O’Track.
• Coaches teachers on the correct Talk for Writing texts, planning and implementation of the programmes being used to support teaching.
• Attends up-date meetings when they occur and report back to the teaching staff.
• Speaks to the head teacher and SENCO regarding grouping and identifies children at risk of not reaching year group expectations.
• Is responsible for reporting to the governors about the quality of the implementation of English throughout the school and the impact on standards.