If you require any additional information regarding the curriculum other than that stated below, please contact the school office.

 Additionally, you can find the National Curriculum at https://www.gov.uk/national-curriculum/overview or ask for a copy from the school office.

 

 "I love reading as it takes you somewhere else."  Year 5 child 2022

"When writing, I can now make clear sentences as the teacher breaks down the tasks and it is easier to concentrate. Before I found writing too hard and struggled to put my ideas down on paper." Year 3 child 2022

"The Write Stuff is amazing. I enjoy writing so much more now. Breaking it down into chunks helps me include the vocabulary and skills I need." Year 6 Child 2022

 

ENGLISH POLICY ENGLISH CURRICULUM MAP

PHONICS AND READING OVERVIEWPHONICS POLICY 2022 

BUG CLUB PHASES AND COLOUR BAND PROGRESSION 

PROGRESSION THROUGH GENRES CURRICULUM 

 WRITING PROGRESSION GRAMMAR PROGRESSION 

 Spelling Letter

Spelling Homework Template

Spelling Homework Examples

 

 

 

 

Our intent is to deliver an exciting and innovative English curriculum, which enables and empowers children’s written and oral communication and creativity. We have a creative knowledge based curriculum as we believe this engages our children’s learning and as a result their progress. As best as we can, we try to link our English curriculum, with our Primary Knowledge Curriculum (PKC) lessons. Our curriculum closely follows the aims of the National Curriculum for English 2014 to enable all children to:

 

● 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.

 

Our intent is to have children, who have a passion of both reading and writing and to be able to express their thoughts and ideas clearly and creatively verbally and through written text. We also intend to create reflective writers, who can re-read, edit and improve their own writing, and enable pupils to be able to confidently use the essential skills of grammar, punctuation and spelling. Reading lies at the heart of the curriculum at our school. We are dedicated to enabling our pupils to become lifelong readers, who can read fluently and have a secure understanding, as we believe reading is key for academic success across the whole curriculum. At Great Paxton, we set high expectations for all our children to take pride in their work, have a confidence in themselves whilst allowing their imaginations to flourish.

 

 

At Great Paxton, children take part in a reading session every day. This can include independent ‘read for pleasure’ sessions, one-on-one reading, guided, year group and/or whole class reading lessons (led by the teacher). Children are exposed to a range of texts and can demonstrate their understanding and thinking behind these. These can relate to their English writing unit or to the class topic. We use a range of high quality texts and resources to engage our children. In Autumn 2022, we introduced a new reading scheme Bug Club, which in both key stages offers colour banded books (Early Years, Yr 1 and 2 phase linked to the phoneme) and a huge range of online books. All children can access these both at school and home. Teachers are able to set the appropriate colour banded books for the children to read and then they take a comprehension quiz after. The teacher monitors the results of these. Furthermore, we also have the colour banded scheme Project X, Parson, Oxford Reading Scheme, use of short extracts, video clips (Literacy Shed and Pixl clips) and texts recommended by Babcock Publishing (Cambs LA,) Focus Education and texts from PKC.  Plus, children are read to most days by their class teacher. This can be a book that the teacher recommends to the class or a recommendation from a child.  

Each class has a reading area, where there is a wide range of independent reading books, which are appropriate to the year group. All children choose a reading book to take home and this reading book is changed frequently.  Moreover, each classroom has a selection of books, which are directly linked to the knowledge-based lessons. This offers opportunities for pupils to apply their reading skills across the curriculum. In our class reading areas, we have an interactive display where children can review and recommend the books they have read.

Children in key stage 2, who are not yet ‘free readers’, are given a range of interventions including, 1-1 reading support by an adult, Project X Code, ERT, Toe by Toe, Nessy and our new Bug Club, where our teachers can set colour coded books. 

Across the school, we celebrate and encourage reading so every half term we mix the children and they share their favourite reading book and any writing that they want to share. Furthermore, staff enjoy promoting reading by also ‘reading for pleasure’ with their class at least every half term.

In Autumn 2022, we launched our new library, which some children in Yr 6 helped to create and organise. This space enables children to really escape and enjoy reading.  This was designed follow a pupil voice in summer 2022 where a Year 4 child stated that reading takes you somewhere else! A Year 2 said that they love reading because it’s calming.

In order to help us to develop confident, enthusiastic writers, who can express themselves in a variety of different styles and across a variety of contexts, our planning of English lessons are now using the new scheme the Write Stuff to help teachers with their planning and also to ensure coverage and progression for our children. Through our evolving whole school curriculum map, we try to make as many links as possible with the units in our PKC, whether it’s DT, science, art, history, geography.  These links provide further context for learning and therefore our children have regular opportunities to write for a range of purposes and audience.

 

The Write Stuff Overview:

Teaching units focus on fiction, non-fiction or poetry, in line with the 2014 National Curriculum and comprehension, grammar and writing are embedded in lessons.

The lesson sequences from the Write Stuff provide ‘experience’ moments to enthuse the children, whilst also focusing on ‘sentence stacking’ lessons. This then progressively works towards an extended structured piece of writing, including the teaching of grammar skills required. Teachers set each child personalised targets, through ‘cold writes’ at the beginning of a unit. Then children complete an independent ‘gold write,’ which is an opportunity for children to demonstrate their progress through achieving their personalised targets.

Throughout every lesson, verbal feedback and assessment for learning is embedded and children are active in reviewing the successes in their work and identifying, with support from their teacher, target areas for development to ensure a continuous and individualised approach to improving their written work.

Each class has an English ‘working wall’ using the same resources from our new scheme The Write Stuff, which promotes learning and is used as an integral part of teaching a genre in writing.  

Spelling is taught daily in both key stages. Phonics is now taught through using a systematic synthetic phonics programme- Bug Club. From Yr 2-6, when appropriate, spelling is taught through the recommended Jane Considine- The Spelling Book, which is linked to the Write Stuff. Each class, has a ‘Spell it Out’ working wall, which promotes the 15 spelling words and sound associations that the children are learning. This is interactive, where the children can add any new words found at home, in class or in their reading books.

  

 

 

The organisation of the English curriculum, has created a community of enthusiastic readers and writers who enjoy showcasing their developing literacy knowledge and skills. Children are able to see the progress they have made through their ‘cold’ and ‘gold’ tasks and love to discuss and share their ideas. Outcomes of work in both English and topic books evidence the high quality work and the impact of varied and cross curricular writing opportunities. These enable children to write across a range of forms and adapt their writing successfully, considering the purpose. By the time children leave Great Paxton, they are competent readers who can recommend books to their peers, have a thirst for reading a range of genres including poetry, and participate in discussions about books, including evaluating an author’s use of language and the impact this can have on the reader. They can also read books to enhance their knowledge and understanding of all subjects on the curriculum, and communicate their research to a wider audience.

 

All children can read! Our new revamped library area is now actively being used.

KS2 are invited to 'read with a view' every Friday at 12.30pm