Intent
The intent of our English curriculum is to deliver the aims of the National Curriculum in a way that teaches pupils to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them. Through our text based units, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development. All the skills of language are essential to participating fully as a member of society and this is what we strive towards in our curriculum. New knowledge which is sequenced and skills that build on what have been taught before work towards clearly defined endpoints in writing and progression through threshold concepts in reading.
Implementation
We at The Richard Clarke First School, strive to implement an English curriculum that is rich, engaging and purposeful. It is rich in the sense that we offer a wide variety of multifaceted units of learning that are fruitful in vocabulary, language and subject content. We ensure that we fully invest in language skills from the earliest stage and continually build and stretch the pupils’ ambition and confidence with words and understanding. We prioritise reading across the curriculum to ensure that rich involvement with literature is instilled into the children naturally, where they explore and develop the art of semantics as well as a love and passion for reading.
We engage and motivate our learners using high quality text based units that are carefully sourced, considered and adapted. A variety of thoughtfully selected authors are used to anchor both reading and writing whilst planned progression underpins the learning journey. Our connected speaking and listening and reading and writing curriculum brings greater purpose in our implementation and allows children to link their learning, continually build on new skills and contextualise all of their ideas, avoiding the episodic isolated learning that does not optimise potential.
We believe that a purposeful curriculum is key to long term, lifelong learning. That is why we ensure the books children engage in meet their needs; whether this is through our cohesive and phonics based reading scheme or our wide variety of planned texts and genres, it is vital that these match the children’s ability, interests and cultural capital gaps. That is why we consistently promote rich language skills as well as our curriculum drivers of diversity, possibilities, wellbeing and environment. To make the implementation as purposeful as possible, we also ensure we assess, track and respond to frequent and meaningful assessment opportunities to triangulate the planning, teaching and assessment cycle.
Our overview of main texts:
Coming soon
Impact
As a result of all that we do, The Richard Clarke First School have a community of active listeners and enthusiastic speakers, readers and writers who enjoy showcasing their developing literacy knowledge and skills by a variety of means. Not only do we have a group of teaching practitioners who know exactly the needs and passions of each and every pupil but we also have pupils who are confident to take risks in their speaking, reading and writing, love to discuss and share their ideas and make strong progress through the threshold concepts.
Speaking and Listening
Speaking and listening underpins the development of reading and writing. Skills are taught both explicitly and incidentally across the whole curriculum, including through extra-curricular activities. Through our inclusive and positive ethos and careful curriculum planning, we enable children to develop as confident and skillful speakers and active and respectful listeners.
RCFS Speaking and Listening Progression of Skills
Reading
At the Richard Clarke First School, we aim to provide children with the reading skills, knowledge and vocabulary that they will need for life, to ensure that they are confident readers in the future and to support them in the wider world.
In order to do this, teachers ensure that each week they focus on a different reading skill, VIPERS, to provide depth in children’s reading ability, to stretch their capabilities and make sure that children have a strong understanding of the range of texts they are exposed to. With clarifying and decoding and comprehension being a recurring theme throughout, that is weaved into all aspects of the reading curriculum.
Teachers also pride themselves in making reading stimulating and exciting through a range of resources.
Essential characteristics of being an effective reader:
THRESHOLD CONCEPTS IN READING:
To read accurately (decoding and fluency)
To understand texts (VIPERS)
RCFS Reading Progression of Skills
Writing
The purpose of writing is to inform, to entertain, to explain, to persuade, to argue, to evaluate and to express. Our writing curriculum is designed to have purpose and audience in mind, when learning to write. (Purpose: communication, audience: others). The mechanics of writing are taught in our English lessons through our text based units that are designed to stimulate and motivate our children to have a love of writing and vocabulary and a good understanding of genre and a focus on the characteristic features of writing. We also write across the wider curriculum, where we are writing to learn. (Purpose: to learn, audience: ourselves). Here the focus is on curriculum content and knowledge (with the added bonus of becoming better writers!)
RCFS Writing Progression of Skills
THRESHOLD CONCEPTS IN WRITING:
Transcription (Present neatly, spell correctly, punctuate accurately)
Composition (write with purpose, use imaginative description, organise appropriately)
Reflect (has the writing got the right effect and meaning and response from the audience)
“I Like English because it allows you to write and do recaps and even lets you know about amazing words you’ve never heard before!”
“I love English because the topic Narnia is so much fun!”
“English is great because I love to write!”
