English at Denby Free. 

Reading, writing, speaking and listening are fundamental life skills. Through the English curriculum, our pupils develop the skills, knowledge and vocabulary to enable them to communicate effectively and creatively through both spoken and written language. They will also leave our school having developed a love of literature, passion for words, confidence to perform and having written for a range of meaningful outcomes.

Reading

We believe that creating a culture of reading is vital to giving our children the best life chances. We provide rich and meaningful opportunities to support our pupils to become fluent and critical readers. Texts are chosen to develop empathy and an understanding of society beyond the home and school setting, to improve wellbeing and to equip pupils with the skills to become lifelong learners. This is supported by the Star Readers initiative, designed to promote the joys and benefits of reading to all our pupils.

Through our reading curriculum, we offer broad and rich reading experiences and have a balance of phonics, whole word and meaning-based approaches to teach children to read. This is supported by our use of the Little Wandle phonics scheme in the Early Years and Key Stage 1. Our pupils are grouped according to their ability and are streamed across the year groups, with each group focussing on phonemes and books that are appropriately matched to their current level of ability and positioning within the scheme. Children are regularly assessed to ensure they are making the expected progress. The expectation is that our pupils have mastered phonics by the end of Year 1, but when needed, are supported in subsequent years. We also strive to introduce all children to a wide range of children’s literature and explore ways in which reading can broaden the experience of life and give a sense of what is possible.

Once pupils have mastered word reading, the development of fluency, reading stamina and comprehension skills become the principle aims. In Year 2, this initially centres on building fluency and the basic retrieval of key information in texts, before moving onto developing the ability to read between the lines and draw simple inferences and conclusions from texts. In Key Stage 2, these central comprehension skills are then developed further through the use of a broader range of more complex and sophisticated texts. Pupils then also develop the ability to read at length and a range of longer texts are available for children to read, which supports pupils at school and home to become fluent, confident readers by the time they leave our school.

Pupils have access to the following reading opportunities to develop their phonic ability, fluency, reading stamina, comprehension and love for reading:

• One-to-one reading.
• Little Wandle phonics scheme.
• Whole class share reading.
• Paired reading with peers.
• Regular independent reading.
• Home school reading supported by books closely matched to pupils’ reading levels.
• Regular visits to the school library.
• Application of reading skills across the curriculum.
• Engagement with Denby Reading Challenges
• Regular ‘reading for pleasure’ sessions.
• Our ‘5-a-day’ approach in the early years – repeated reads of key texts to instils a love of literature and practice essential story language.
• Themed reading events and visits from story tellers and authors.
• Celebratory reading assemblies.
• Class reads.

Writing

We plan meaningful units of work for English writing according to the 2014 National Curriculum, which support pupils to:

• Write for a range of purposes, including a range of story genres, non-fiction texts and poetry.
• Develop the stamina and skills to write at length.
• Use accurate spelling, punctuation and grammar.
• Write to support the consolidation of what they have heard or read.

A broad range of exciting and high-quality texts are used to support these sequences of learning, which cover all fiction and non-fiction writing genres. We develop pupils’ ability to write in the following fiction genres:

• Traditional stories, fairytales, fables and folktales.
• Myths and legends.
• Stories from other cultures.
• Stories with familiar settings.
• Stories with mystery settings.
• Stories set in imaginary worlds.
• Stories with historical settings.
• Stories that raise issues.
• Stories with flashbacks.
• Adventure stories.
• Playscripts.
• A range of poetry.

We develop pupils’ ability to write in the following non-fiction genres:

• Instruction texts.
• Recount texts.
• Non-chronological reports.
• Explanation texts.
• Persuasive and discussion texts.

Spoken English

Speaking and listening underpins all learning. To be able to write competently, children need to be articulate. We expect our pupils to use Standard English at every opportunity, and for teachers to model this standard. We promote children’s ability to explain and present their learning in every lesson and believe this deepens their knowledge and understanding.

Examples include:

• Cold calling and regular questioning in lessons.
• Formal and informal presentations in the classroom and at a whole-school level.
• Drama activities such as hot seating and conscience alley.
• Opportunities to collaborate with peers across the curriculum.
• Participation in plays, performances and debates.
• Structured and open-ended opportunities in early years continuous provision to encourage interactions between children and their peers and with adults.