Harrietsham Church of England Primary School
English
Statement of Intent
At Harrietsham Church of England Primary School, we believe that a quality English curriculum should develop a child’s love of reading, writing, speaking and listening. We aim to inspire children to read widely and often; for enjoyment, for information gathering and as a tool for enhancing the richness of their written work. We want to inspire children to be confident in the art of speaking and listening and to develop their language and communication skills. We understand that children need to develop a secure knowledge base in English, which follows a clear pathway of progression as they advance through the primary curriculum. We believe having a secure basis in English skills is crucial to accessing high quality education across all subjects and necessary to provide our children with the tools they need to fully participate within society.
Implementation
Our rigorous and well organised English curriculum closely follows the aims and the progression outlined in the National Curriculum. It provides many purposeful opportunities for reading, writing and discussion. We recognise the importance of a rich and diverse curriculum and we always strive to incorporate cross curricular writing opportunities and provide real purposes for writing. We believe that active learning increases pupil engagement and creativity and we use our locality, as a rural village school, as well as our large, safe outdoor learning spaces to ensure positive outcomes.
At Harrietsham Church of England Primary School, we have developed our own unique curriculum. We firmly believe that children's literacy is improved when our English teaching sequences are based around high quality, powerful texts. To that end, we choose books that are emotionally strong; books with storylines and plots that allow opportunities to explore dilemmas, challenges, morality and ethics, characters that children can identify with and books that have author diversity. These include narrative, poetry, traditional tales, texts with engaging illustrations, and interesting non-fiction texts. All the texts we choose offer indepth and real writing experiences, meaningful study of literary styles and rhythms, opportunities for response that is creative and open-ended, all whilst keeping children engaged with the characters and the story as a whole.
Writing
We use our own ‘Harrietsham Writing Process’, which allows children to explore powerful examples of texts, engage with new skills and develop their own literature.
Harrietsham’s bespoke writing process, created using the DfE Writing Framework and research from the CLPE and EEF.
Grammar
Grammar skills are taught within writing lessons, using our Harrietsham writing framework to ensure clear progression and development of skills. Our frameworks meet all of the requirements of the 2014 DfE National Curriculum.
The diagrams below show the Grammar skills taught at Key Stage 1 and at Key Stage 2.
Handwriting
Children are taught to write in discrete handwriting sessions, starting in EYFS. Children start with fine and gross motor skills, before moving onto basic letter structures and then moving onto joined handwriting from the end of Year 2 to Year 6. We use the ‘Letterjoin’ handwriting scheme. We have consistently high expectations of handwriting and presentation across all areas of learning. Our children take pride in their work and recognise the need to write carefully and clearly so that it can be celebrated by everyone. We use the handwriting recovery programme from ‘Letterjoin’ to support those that require extra support with their writing.
Reading
In Early Years (EYFS) and Year 1, we use the ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised’ phonics programme. Children are given regular opportunities to apply the phonics they have learned to read fully decodable books. The phonic progression in these books exactly matches the progression of Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. Children are then given opportunities to practise their writing within phonics sessions, English sessions and during Explore and Discover time. The promotion of high reading standards continues from Year 2 onwards through the use of the Complete Comprehension reading scheme.
As well as shared class reading, children have books to take home for daily reading and regularly read with an adult in class. Our imaginative and welcoming book corners, featured in every classroom, offer a variety of genres for the children to browse and choose from, as well as a plethora of hands-on opportunities to encourage real engagement with all areas of reading. Teachers will make links between books that are being read and writing tasks to provide children with real purpose and audience to their work.
For more information about Reading at Harrietsham, see our Phonics and Reading page here: Phonics and Reading.
Spelling
Spelling continues into KS2 with the use of the Spelling Shed scheme, focussing on spelling conventions, patterns, rules and strategies, providing a clear progression as the children advance through the primary curriculum.
We also provide a wealth of English-based enrichment opportunities including cross-class reading sessions, extracurricular drama club, celebrations of specific genre days and weekly visits to our onsite library.
Impact
As a result of our English curriculum, Harrietsham Church of England Primary School is a community of enthusiastic readers and writers who enjoy showcasing our developing literacy knowledge and skills. The children are confident to take risks in their reading and writing, and love to discuss and share their ideas. Our children's learning is assessed through our teacher's assessment and knowing and understanding the children in our care. We also track progress across the school using standardised testing to ensure that we can individually track progression of skills and learning. We hope that as our children continue with their education and learning, that their creativity, passion for and high aspirations for English, travel with them, continuing to grow and develop as they do.
Writing Subject Frameworks
Our Frameworks give details of all of the areas of Writing that we would want an Age Expected child to have mastered at the end of each term. Click the links below to view the Writing Framework for each year group within our school.
Writing Subject Concepts
- Our Writing Concepts are key concepts within the Writing curriculum which we have identified as being important to our children's English learning. These concepts run through our Writing Curriculum and are revisited and built upon at various points in our children's educational journey.
- Writing Subject Concepts
Writing Ready to Progress Criteria
- Our Writing Ready to Progress Criteria are the key objectives that we would like each child to have mastered before moving onto the next year group curriculum. Without mastering these Ready to Progress Criteria, the children may develop gaps in their learning.
- Writing Ready to Progress Criteria
For Parents
- Statutory Spellings - Key Stage 2
- Harrietsham Writing Process
- Spelling Shed: Information for parents about Spelling Shed, which we use to teach spelling for Years 2 - 6.
English Leadership
Mr Walker is our English Leader. For more information about English at our school, please contact him via the school office.
