English
Intent
At Dilton Marsh Primary School, English and the teaching of English is the foundation of our curriculum. Our aim is to ensure every child becomes primary literate and progresses in speaking and listening, reading and writing. We have high expectations for all our children, and want each of them to achieve their full potential in English during their time at Dilton Marsh School so that they ready for the next step in their education.
English is not only a daily discrete lesson, it is the cornerstone to all learning at Dilton Marsh by being embedded in each area of learning. We endeavour to help our children develop into articulate and imaginative communicators, to support and enhance their thinking and understanding of the world around them through a broad, rich and engaging English curriculum.
We ensure books, vocabulary and reading have a central role in our curriculum, not only to enhance learning, but to support the development of children’s emotional literacy.
Implementation
To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in English, we have implemented a curriculum that is progressive through the school. To support the implementation of this, we use a variety of different resources for each aspect of the subject.
Reading
In EYFS and Year 1, for phonics, we follow a systematic approach using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme. Each grapheme is introduced clearly; a focus is placed on blending to read and segmenting to spell. This provides children with the skills they need to begin to read words, captions and whole sentences as soon as possible. The teaching of phonics begins in Reception, and teaching continues daily to at least the point where children can read almost all words fluently.
In addition, working in small groups, EYFS, Year 1, and Year 2 children until the end of term 2, experience three reading practice sessions per week. These focus on the key reading skills of decoding, prosody and comprehension. This approach continues as needed for children who still need to practise reading with decodable books.
Children in year 2, when they are ready, and children in year 3 onwards, progress from learning to read to reading to learn. We use clearly structured high quality teaching to create our whole class reading sessions. Whole class reading exposes the children to a wide range of specifically mapped texts of different types enabling the teaching of explicit skills needed, as well as answer reading comprehension questions orally and in writing.
For individual reading, children move from the phonetically decodable books of Little Wandle, to choosing a book from the class book corner. Book choices are guided where necessary. Depending on the age and reading ability of the child, these books may also be read in school with an adult. Staff monitor the children’s choice of book to ensure suitability and variety in genre and author. Parents may comment in the child’s home-link book when they hear their child read.
Writing
In year 1 the focus is on transcription – spelling and handwriting - as well as on oral sentence construction. Spelling is linked to Little Wandle phonic learning and tricky words and practised through regular dictation. Oral sentence construction, and writing when the children are ready, is linked to a different book each week. These have been mapped out to match learning in other subjects as well as the children’s interests. We follow the Letterjoin scheme for handwriting with regular lessons taught over the week.
In year 2, there is also a focus on transcription as well as on oral sentence construction. In term 1 and 2, spelling is linked to the learning in Little Wandle and practised through regular dictation. When ready, the children will be taught spelling through the ‘Essential Spelling Scheme’ which includes overlearning as well as regular dictation. We follow the Letterjoin scheme for handwriting with regular lessons taught over the week. Sentence writing and, when the children are ready, longer pieces of writing, are linked to a book or book extract - these have been mapped out across the year to ensure a variety of texts and authors, as well as to link to other subjects where appropriate. To begin with, the focus is on fiction, then simple non-fiction writing is introduced later in the year. The teacher will support the children with vocabulary gathering, then orally model the writer’s thinking process as well as the writing process for the children to emulate. Punctuation and grammar is taught as a separate lesson but then applied in context.
In key stage 2, we follow ‘The Write Stuff’ approach to writing. Each writing unit has two components: firstly, in our sentence stacking lessons, we start by initiating our thinking and generating our ideas for writing. Over the course of the unit, the class co-construct a text and the children develop their understanding of its key components. In this first phase, the children are guided and supported, with vocabulary and ideas at the heart of every learning chunk. Punctuation and grammar is applied in context. The second phase is when the children apply the skills they have developed to their own text. Once completed, it is in this second stage of writing that the children are given time and taught the skills to edit and improve their work.
Our writing curriculum ensures that children are taught how to write narrative, poetry and a range of non-fiction texts. Our children revisit and consolidate their skills through different units. Punctuation and grammar is taught as a discrete lesson but then applied in context.
Spelling is taught in several short sessions over the week through the ‘Essential Spelling Scheme’ which includes regular dictation. In addition, handwriting is taught through several short sessions over the week using the Letterjoin handwriting scheme.
Impact
The impact of the English curriculum on our children is that they progress, experience sustained learning and transferrable skills which will enable them to access the whole curriculum.
The writing skills they acquire will allow all pupils to communicate well, accurately and creatively in a range of styles for a range of purposes and audiences.
We aim for children to leave Dilton Marsh Primary School with a love of reading and writing and high aspirations to continue this love of our language into the next phase of their academic journey
