St Theresa's RC Primary School

English

 Our English Subject Lead is Mrs N. F and our Subject Link Governor is Mairhead Handrick. 

 Statement of English Intent

At St Theresa’s, our Mission Statement is "Walking in God’s Way, We Believe, Achieve and Succeed"  In order to fulfil this mission we strive to build foundations to enable every child to become literate, preparing them with the skills for adult life. Our high quality English curriculum is engrained into everything we do.

We ensure pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually.  We will strive to ensure every child develops the confidence and competence to embrace literature in its many forms.  

"Words matter because they create our world and ourselves. Without words, thought is a meagre crumb".  Pie Corbett  

Writing for Purpose

At St Theresa's RC School we want children to:

• See themselves as a writer and celebrate their success

• Be able to reflect, edit and publish their own work

• Be able to select appropriate word choice, sentence structure and text form for effect

• Understand the relevance of writing to themselves and their lives

• Understand the purpose, audience and forms of writing

• Develop resilience as independent writers

At St Theresa's RC Primary we have a ‘Purpose for Writing’ approach. Rather than trying to teach children ten or more different genres or text types (which can actually be used for a variety of purposes), our approach focusses on what those different types have in common: the purpose for writing.

The four purposes to write being taught across KS1 and KS2 are:

• to entertain

• to inform

• to persuade

• to discuss

Below is our long term plan for writing in our school:

Writing Long Term Plan

EYFS and KS1 Focus: to Entertain and to Inform

LKS2 Focus: to Inform, Entertain and Persuade

UKS2 Focus: to Inform, Entertain, Persuade and Discuss 

Useful Resources and Reading: Michael Tidd has created guidance notes that offer some indications of National Curriculum content that might be covered in each section (purpose) including:

• elements of whole-text ideas

• suggestions for sentences and grammar

• notes on punctuation to include

• some examples of conjunctions and adverbials.

English Units planned across school are planned around core texts within each year group.  Within these units, there are further opportunities to develop comprehension skills.  Further to this, grammar and punctuation objectives as well as writing opportunities are all linked to the selected core text.

Handwriting

At St Theresa’s RC Primary School we are very proud of our pupil’s handwriting and take particular care in our cursive handwriting style. We use Letter-Join online handwriting resource and lesson planners as the basis of our handwriting policy as it covers all the requirements of the National Curriculum.

Handwriting is a basic skill that influences the quality of work throughout the curriculum. By the end of Key Stage 2 all pupils should have the ability to produce fluent, legible and, eventually, speedy joined-up handwriting, and to understand the different forms of handwriting used for different purposes.

Our intention is to make handwriting an automatic process that does not interfere with creative and mental thinking.

Reading

As children learn word recognition and decoding skills they develop their understanding of the text and appreciation of the range of reading material they can access. In EYFS and KS1 we set out to secure good communication alongside phonics and promote reading aloud reading strategies throughout school to develop fluency. We teach explicit language skills through our daily text based English lessons and WC Guided reading sessions, which is an opportunity to develop essential ‘Domain’ skills (Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval and Summary/Sequencing skills).

Phonics

We strive to teach children to read effectively and quickly using the Phonics Bug Phonics programme which includes teaching synthetic phonics, sight vocabulary, decoding and encoding words as well as spelling and accurate letter formation. We passionately believe that teaching children to read and write independently, as quickly as possible, is one of the core purposes of a primary school. These fundamental skills not only hold the keys to the rest of the curriculum but also have a huge impact on children’s self-esteem and future life chances. (Please see our Phonics page).