Forest Hall Primary School

English

Statement of Intent

For our children to become confident and fluent readers who want to read for pleasure and can read effectively to get information.

For our children to become competent writers who can effectively communicate their ideas in writing for different purposes.

For our children to leave our school able to communicate their ideas and opinions orally, with clarity, confidence and precision.

Literacy Lead:

Ms. N Renaldi

English unites the important literacy skills of reading and writing and also involves speaking and listening. The aim of our English curriculum at Forest Hall Primary School is to enable every child to explore, develop and enjoy all aspects of our language in order to communicate appropriately and effectively.

Statutory requirements for the teaching and learning of English are laid out in the National Curriculum English Document and in the Communication, Language and Literacy section of the Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage. Within school, we also follow the Primary Framework for Literacy, with each year group following a range of exciting units of work covering narrative, non-narrative and poetry.

At Forest Hall, we believe that reading opens many doors of opportunity in education and in later life. It is vital that our children leave our school as confident and fluent readers. We recognise the importance of teaching phonics whilst also appreciating children learn to read through different styles and clues. We use the ‘Read Write Inc’ scheme to develop confident readers and writers from Reception through Key Stage One. Pupils are encouraged to develop their fluency, understanding and enjoyment of reading through published scheme books such as RWI and 'Oxford Reading Tree'. These are enhanced with a wide range of interesting texts in a variety of genres and guided reading sessions in class. Our school is committed to developing a love of books in our children. We aim to do that in a variety of ways such as ensuring the children have access to recent quality texts and taking them to special events where they can meet published authors.

We are very proud of our school library. There is a teaching space and a special story area, complete with story throne plus a wide selection of fiction and non-fiction books for all ages. Younger pupils visit the library regularly to choose books to take home. Older children tend to choose books to take home from the class collection. We take out a school loan from the CYP service to make sure our children have access to current authors. We also have a great relationship with our local library at Forest in Forest Hall and Y6 pupils can take part in Chatterbook sessions there.

Pupils have the opportunity to write in a variety of styles and for a range of audiences, planned to be purposeful and meaningful to them. This is embedded throughout the curriculum to enhance the quality of writing in all subjects, including the use of ICT.

We use the commercial 'Letterjoin' scheme to develop handwriting skills. Pupils learn to print and then to join their letters. We aim for pupils to be fully cursive by the end of year three.

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