English

English is the foundation of our Curriculum

At D’Eyncourt Primary School, English and the teaching of English is the foundation of our curriculum. We believe that English underpins the school curriculum by developing students’ abilities to speak, listen, read and write for a range of purposes, using language to learn and communicate, to think, explore and organise. Helping students to express themselves clearly in writing enhances and enriches teaching and learning in all subjects.

We believe that a quality English curriculum should develop our children’s love of reading, writing and discussion. Our main aim is to ensure every single child becomes primary literate and progresses in the areas of reading, writing, speaking and listening. We believe that the ability to write with confidence and accuracy is an essential life skill. Writing is a complex process that draws upon more than handwriting and spelling.  It is the ability to effectively communicate ideas, information and opinions through writing in a wide range of contexts. Successful writers understand the social function and characteristics of writing in order to use different genres appropriately, matching it to audience and purpose. We aim to equip children with the skills necessary to achieve this, throughout the curriculum.

We follow the National Curriculum which ensures that a range of genres are covered, including narrative (e.g. extended stories, stories by the same author, myths and legends, adventure stories and traditional stories), non-fiction (e.g. persuasive texts, non-chronological reports, information texts, recounts, reports and letters) and poetry (e.g. rhyme, nonsense rhymes, shape poems, acrostic and descriptive poetry). 

In order to expose children to a variety of genres which helps to utilise and embed the writing skills, teachers use a writing journey to plan, structure and teach their English lessons. This journey is designed to show progress, teach the pertinent year group objectives, apply and consolidate these skills and develop vocabulary. Writing is taught through the use of a quality texts and videos, which exposes the children to use inference skills, high-level vocabulary, a range of punctuation and characterisation. Each text is purposefully selected in order to promote a love of reading, engagement and high-quality writing from each child.

For reading across Key Stage One – please visit the Phonics (Reading) page for further details.

Aims

At D’Eyncourt we aim to provide children with:

• The ability to write with confidence, clarity and imagination
• A language rich curriculum and environment that encourages the use of ambitious vocabulary.
• A love of writing, and knowledge of genres and authors.
• An understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions of writing.
• Progression of writing skills across the school.
• An understanding of how to write in a range of genres (including fiction, non-fiction and poetry), using the appropriate style, structure and features.
• High quality teaching that models high standards in writing to secure high expectations and inspire writers.
• The ability to be independent writers who can plan, draft, revise and edit their own work, and learn how to self- and peer-assess against the success criteria;
• Opportunities to write for pleasure for a variety of different purposes
• The opportunity to become confident spellers.

National Curriculum English Programmes of Study