English at Sutton Bonington

Curriculum Intent

At Sutton Bonington Primary School, we want all children to develop a love of reading, writing and discussion, with them feeling they belong to a place where all children strive to become more curious learners.

We want all children to flourish in their writing, writing clearly, imaginatively and accurately, with children developing a secure base of knowledge of English, following a clear progression as they advance through the primary curriculum.

We believe that a secure basis in English enables children to flourish in the entire curriculum.

Implementation

Our English curriculum is implemented through the use of rich texts, engaging pupils with ways in which others have expressed themselves. These are then used to develop children’s desire to express themselves, learning how to use grammar, spelling and vocabulary effectively.

We believe that choosing the right context and starting point to engage our children in their learning is vital in fostering a love for reading and writing.

Our English curriculum aims to provide many purposeful opportunities for reading, writing and discussion. We want all our pupils to be proficient readers, writers, spellers and speakers, who can transfer these skills to other areas of the curriculum.

English is taught as a focus subject in the following lessons:

• Reading
• Writing including grammar.
• Phonics
• Handwriting
• Spelling

These will often be part of a sequence of learning, but can be discrete lessons.

Reading

Reading is the cornerstone of our English provision at Sutton Bonington Primary School.

This is implemented in a range of ways:

• Class reading. Children will engage with a shared text, answering questions to clarify their understanding.
• 1:1 reading. This primarily happens in the lower years with Sutton Bonington Primary school.
• Phonics (explained below)
• Private reading. This is where children read independently, engaging in books that are matched to their reading level. It may be that the child is a ‘free-reader’, so they can engage with books they enjoy reading.
• Reading for pleasure. This is where children read books, newspapers, magazines or anything else that they enjoy reading. We have a selection of 50 high quality texts in each class for children.

We aim to use high quality texts to support the teaching of reading, using book talk and questioning to develop these further. Class reading books are chosen to best enable progress within the classroom. These may be challenging, but that is to best support progress. Our class reading books aim to provide a wide variety of both fiction and non-fiction books to help advance children’s comprehension skills.

Home reading

Children in EYFS and Year 1 will typically have one phonetically decodable book ascribed by the phonics scheme. Alongside this, they may have an additional book matched to their reading level. The Harper Collins phonics book from Little Wandle must be brought back into school every day.

At the end of the Year 1, children are assessed to work out which book colour they should move onto. They follow on these colours, being assessed before moving onto the next colour. Once the final book colour has been reached, teachers have digression over whether a child becomes a ‘free-reader’ or is given additional books to read to support their reading progress.

Once a child is a free-reader, they can read books appropriate to their level. They will be directed to these by their teach and they can access their class bookshelves to get a book appropriate to them. These books can be taken home and read. Children can also bring books into school. Children should read for 10 minutes a day, 5 times a week.

Phonics

The Phonics and Early Reading section of our website offers more information on how Phonics is taught and how to support children at home. You can find it here.

Phonics is the matching of the sounds of Spoken English with individual letters or groups of letters. Our phonics lessons are short lessons (usually around 20 minutes in length).

For phonics, we use the Little Wandle scheme. This scheme of learning primarily supports teaching in EYFS and Year 1, but also provides catch up for children beyond Year 1. All teachers and teaching assistants in school are trained with our Little Wandle Scheme.

The key features of our phonics implementation are as follows:

• direct teaching in frequent, short bursts
• consistency of approach
• secure, systematic progression in phonics learning
• maintaining pace of learning
• providing repeated practice
• application of phonics using matched decodable books
• early identification of children at risk of falling behind, linked to the provision of effective keep-up support.

Writing

All children from EYFS to Year 6 are provided with opportunities to develop and apply their writing within English and across the curriculum. This is implemented through regular shared and group writing, where we equip children to express themselves confidently and with clarity. Children use the skills learned through this to create their own independent pieces of writing. Children will typically do one piece of extended writing each week, with different levels of independence required from EYFS to Year 6.

Grammar

Grammar is taught within English writing, aiming to better help children to express themselves. We use the progression set out within the National Curriculum to inform our lessons.

Spelling

For EYFS and Year 1, we primarily use Little Wandle to teach the spellings, as phonics is the doorway to moving from phonetic spelling to correct spelling. In Year 2, we use the Little Wandle Spelling Scheme to support children's transition from Phonics to Spelling. 

From Year 3 to Year 6, we use Jane Considine’s Spelling books to teach spelling. These change spelling from a learning by rote system into a taught lesson that develops the skill of spelling in a fun way. Children receive 15 spellings every two weeks, which they will be tested on incidentally. 15 of the 45 given every half term will be tested on in the last week.

Handwriting

Our handwriting is taught in a sequential and progressive approach, using a cursive system. To be able to handwrite, children often start by strengthening their fine motor skills by, for example, painting, colouring within the lines or writing in sand. By Year 4, children should be joining their letters in most lessons. By Year 6, children be joining their handwriting to a high standard in all lessons. We believe that all children should feel able to take pride in their work and handwriting is a fundamental step towards this.

Curriculum Impact

Children should leave Sutton Bonington Primary School with a love of reading and writing and key skills needed to express themselves effectively. We believe that children at Sutton Bonington should be able to take pride in their work and recognise areas of strength and areas for development.

A Sutton Bonington child should be able to do the following:

• enjoy reading and writing across a range of genres.
• enjoy reading regularly, for information and for enjoyment.
•  discuss books with excitement and interest.
• enjoy writing and use the features of different genres and styles.
• confidently write for different purposes and audiences.
• have a wide vocabulary that they use within their writing.
• have a good knowledge of how to adapt their writing based on the context and audience.
• leave primary school being able to effectively apply spelling rules and patterns they have been taught.

Parents and carers will have a good understanding of how they can support pupils’ reading development at home and how they can support spelling, grammar and composition at home.

Alongside this, our data as a school should show the following:

• The % of pupils working at ARE within each year group will be at least in line with national averages.
• The % of pupils working at Greater Depth within each year group will be at least in line with national averages.
• There will be no significant gaps in the progress of different groups of pupils (e.g. disadvantaged vs non-disadvantaged).