English

English Intent

Vision

At Bramshall Meadows First School, children will become readers, writers and performers. They will have an inspired appreciation of our rich and varied literary heritage. They will take pride in their writing, develop the ability to write and speak clearly, adapting their language and style for a range of contexts and communicate their ideas, views and feelings with confidence. All our Bramshall Meadows family will read for pleasure.

Curriculum

At Bramshall Meadows First School, we endeavour to ensure Reading is at the heart of everything that we do. Our primary intent is to create skilled readers who can reach their full potential in society through their deep understanding of English. By ensuring pupils are empowered with a wealth of knowledge, we know they will have better chances in future success-for economic gain, opportunities, freedom, and social mobility.

Our Reading curriculum offers ambition, challenge and support, placing our pupils’ needs at the heart of it. Our pupils and staff are passionate about it, which creates a strong culture of reading in school, both for pleasure and understanding. We ensure that every pupil is taught the necessary skills needed to access a range of texts, which in turn ensures they develop enhanced levels of comprehension, grammar and writing, consequently enabling them to have the skills and ambition to apply new skills in different contexts, to access all curriculum areas, and build a lifelong passion for reading and learning.

We aim to develop a love of reading through adults reading aloud to pupils across the school community; adults read with enthusiasm and passion and enjoy sharing stories. We celebrate reading within the school environment through oracy sessions, displays and libraries.

Younger pupils are encouraged to regularly read books, which are well matched to the sounds they are learning, as well as choosing books to share and enjoy at home. Ensuring books are well matched to their phonological development, ensures pupils feel successful as readers and begin to develop an enjoyment of reading. Pupils can recommend books to their peers and have a thirst for reading a wide range of high-quality texts across different genres. They participate in discussions about books, have the opportunity to complete school reading challenges and have an established love of reading for life and a passion for lifelong learning.

Reading is taught not only in specific reading lessons but across the wider curriculum too. It helps play a key role in ‘knowing more, remembering more and connecting learning.’ As soon as pupils start school, they are taught to decode using Twinkl Phonics, a systematic

synthetic phonics programme that ensures a progression of word reading systematically from pre-school, and the strategies used to support reading development is interwoven so that pupils can access all curriculum areas; enabling pupils to read like an author or a historian.

Regular professional development plays a key role in ensuring adults know how best to support reading across the school and the advice of ‘reading experts’ is readily available. Pupils understand that they use strategies taught in phonics to decode new words, but also understand that automatic recognition or reading on sight is their aim. Following regular assessments, additional targeted support is provided for certain pupils, so they can ‘keep up’. By the end of Key Stage One, we aim for all our children to be successful readers.

While phonics and fluency are emphasised in the early teaching of reading, immersive wholeclass reading sessions later take precedent. Using quality texts, we aim to provide ambitious models to support reading development and connect learning across the curriculum. Children are exposed to, and actively engage with, high quality language in varying forms in a meaningful, deliberate and engaging ways.

Aims: The overarching aim for English in the national curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment.

The national curriculum for English aims to ensure that all pupils:

• 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.