English

English encompasses the skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening. At Cartmel Primary, English is taught for at least an hour each day with opportunities to further develop their English skills in all other areas of the curriculum. Through the teaching of English, our aim is for our children to learn to communicate their thoughts and ideas clearly, both orally and through their writing.

We understand that the ability to read empowers children to become independent and successful learners. It enables them to fully participate in society and better make sense of the world around them. As such, we consider teaching children to read confidently as one of our most important roles as a school. Our aim is to foster a love of reading and for children of all abilities to become independent readers.

We aim to enable pupils to speak clearly and confidently and articulate their views and opinions. We teach that children need to express themselves orally in an appropriate way, matching their style and response to audience and purpose. Listening and responding to literature, giving and receiving instructions. They develop the skills of participating effectively in group discussions.

How we implement our English curriculum:

Speaking and Listening

• Activities are planned to encourage full and active participation by all children, irrespective of ability
• Children with specific speech and language and auditory problems will be identified and specialist help sought, where appropriate
• Encouraging reading and talk about books
• Poetry recital events
• School Plays
• Class debates
• Weekly collective worships
• Events within the community
• School Council
• Talk partners
• Book talk sessions
• Drama / role play
• PSHE and circle time
• Kidsafe

Reading:

• From Reception and Key Stage 1, pupils are taught to read through daily phonics sessions, regular reading to adults in school, reading partners and an incentive to read at home.
• The Little Wondle scheme, a rigorous teaching of systematic synthetic phonics, is used to teach phonics and books, which are sent home for children to practise their reading, are matched to their phonics level.
• Pupils practise their reading skills throughout the week in school. This  takes the form of whole class reading, guided group reading and 1:1 reading.
• For whole class reading, pupils study books which are related to their half termly topic where possible. They often study books which are more challenging than those which they might be able to read independently and use these texts to explore a richer range of vocabulary.
• Pupils are encouraged to read widely, through our use of differing class texts, library visits and high-quality attractive books in classroom reading areas.
• Pupils are encouraged to read for pleasure using reading partners, quiet reading time, listening to an adult read.
• Across the wider curriculum, pupils use their reading skills to find information.
• Pupils are exposed to a range of texts from their literacy heritage during their school career
• Key Stage Two pupils who are struggling with reading or making slow progress are given accelerated reading support.

Writing:

The teaching of writing is broken down into spelling, sentence construction and transcription to provide children with secure fundamental skills using the progression of skills set out in the National Curriculum for each year group. Each year group has key skills to develop which are embedded into our long-term plans across each school year. We engage our children in the writing process by linking work to carefully chosen, high-quality texts and topic themes across the wider curriculum providing relevant contexts for writing that engage and motivate children to apply their skills. Other approaches include:

• Encouraging and promoting ‘talk for writing’.
• Providing writing frames to support the least confident.
• Providing time for planning, editing and revising.
• Marking extended pieces of work in-depth and setting targets with the pupil.
• Using checklists for pupils to self assess or peer assess, when appropriate so they can evaluate effectively.
• Teaching and encouraging joined handwriting to support spelling and speed.
• Using drama and hot-seating to help pupils to think about another point of view.
• Teaching grammar as a separate lesson where necessary.
• Teachers use their professional judgement when correcting grammatical errors (both spoken and written work) and will take into consideration the age of the child and the individual needs of the child, such as any special educational needs to determine whether corrections are appropriate.