English
Intent
English and the teaching of English is the foundation of the Shakespeare Primary curriculum. Our main aim is to ensure every single child becomes primary literate and progresses in the areas of reading, writing, speaking and listening. English at Shakespeare will not only be a daily discrete lesson but is at the cornerstone of the entire curriculum. It is embedded within all our lessons, and we strive for a high level of English for all. Through using high-quality texts, immersing children in vocabulary rich learning environments and ensuring new curriculum expectations and the progression of skills are met, the children at Shakespeare will be exposed to a language heavy, creative and continuous English curriculum, which will not only enable them to become primary literate but will also develop a love of reading, creative writing and purposeful speaking and listening. Our curriculum closely follows the aims of the National Curriculum for English to enable all children to:
- Read easily, fluently and with good understanding.
- Develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information.
- Acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language.
- Appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage.
- Write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.
- Use discussion to learn; they should be able to elaborate and clearly explain their understanding and ideas.
- Are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate.
Implementation
Regular, high-quality lessons will ensure that our children are fully engaged in both reading and writing. Using high quality text to engage pupils, allows them to understand the ‘reading to writing’ process. Reasons for writing are vital, every child, no matter their ability should want to write, they should want to share their words and having a reason to do so is paramount. Books are everywhere in our environment, from class libraries to the school library and artwork displaying front covers of children’s book are visible around the school. Book fairs and World Book Day encourage children to discover new authors and workshops lead by established authors inspire children to write. Class reader is vital for those children who are struggling to read but should still be allowed access to a higher level of language. These sessions should be not only to engage pupils, but to question them to broaden their comprehension skills. The use of the Kindle App allows every child the opportunity to read along and to ask questions relating to new vocabulary. Assessment of children working towards age-related expectations can take place during these sessions and be used as evidence. By displaying children’s work around school, we are allowing all the children to be inspired to write. Speaking and listening are vital skills for children to acquire and are fundamental to their language development. Children are taught to speak confidently and to adapt their speech to different situations. They are given the opportunity for their language to develop alongside their progress in reading and writing. They will also be given the opportunity to develop into careful and responsive listeners. Grammar and spellings are integrated into our regular English learning and writing is used as an opportunity to develop these further.
Impact
The impact on our children is clear: progress, sustained learning and transferrable skills. With the implementation of the writing journey being well established and taught thoroughly in both key stages, children are becoming more confident writers. By the time they are in upper Key Stage 2, most genres of writing should be familiar to them and the teaching, in most cases can focus on creativity, writer’s craft, sustained writing and manipulation of grammar and punctuation skills. Comprehension is not just limited to understanding what is written but also what is spoken. Children struggling to access higher level reading papers can be assessed by answers given to questioning during class reader sessions. Being allowed to gain confidence in this area helps the child to believe in their ability. The impact of this is essential for our children to function at high school and in the wider community. The staff and governors at Shakespeare want to create a world where everyone is reading their way to a better life. Research shows that reading for pleasure can promote better health and wellbeing, aids in building social connections and relationships with others and is associated with a range of factors that help increase the chances of social mobility.
Here is a list of the class books we read in each year group and the learning links to them, which we discuss with the class in our reading sessions.
Year 2 have been creating their own Superhero characters. Today, we went and told the EYFS children all about our ideas. We think the Class R’s were pretty impressed....
Year 6 have been busy planning, writing and editing narratives including character / setting descriptions. We have also been developing our understanding and knowledge of vocabulary language inside comprehension lessons while also writing non -chronological reports.
In English year 2 have been reading ‘The Colour Monster’ They have been interviewing each other during hot seating sessions to discuss people’s feelings and how we can make people feel better xx
Year 1 have been writing about what they would do if they were a pirate. .
This week Year 1's writing links to the lovely story Marmaduke.
In Year 3 we have been creating our own word carpet using exciting adjectives. We had a walk around the carpet and chose some adjectives to include in our writing to make our writing more interesting.
It's time for some non-fiction writing in Class R! Frogspawn, tadpoles and hopefully some frogs soon! We read a lovely story called 'Growing Frogs' in our nature garden. Miss Hayton got to sit on the huge story chair for the first time this year and we loved our story in the sunshine. We didn't have far to go to see the things from our story in our real life pond! Then we wrote captions for our life cycle of a frog! 🐸🌞
In Year one the children have been doing writing linked to the book Norman The Slug With The Silly Shell.
Intent, Implementation and Impact
In year 3 we have been predicting what we think may happen in our new story 'The Journey'. We used magnifying glasses to take a close look at clues on the front cover.
Year 3-Today in comprehension we worked in teams to read a piece of text and answer questions all about Mary Anning. We have loved learning all about this famous palaeontologist in our Science lessons too.
Year 3- We have been learning how to edit our writing. We have looked closely at finding missing capital letters, full stops and spelling errors. We use green pens to correct our work. We love doing this and pretending we are the teacher.
Oh how busy we have been in EYFS! It was Pancake Day on Tuesday so we absolutely had to read Mr.Wolf's Pancakes! The poor chap needed a lot of help from his neighbours , but they were too mean to help and met a sticky end!! In Class R we are very helpful. We have written a shopping list for him and worked in groups to write a set of instructions to help him make his pancakes. We love pretending to be book characters so we have done some hot seating based on our Mr. Wolf book. Communication and language is very important in EYFS so we now have a 'Chatterbox Partner' who we discuss our answers with at carpet time. We have also been practising using our phonics for word building and spelling too.
Year 5 really enjoyed World Book Day.
We love doing comprehension in Year 5. Here we are having our weekly discussion and recording our answers on big paper.
Year 1 have enjoyed reading The Sound Collector poem by Roger McGough. They collected sounds from around the classroom and made their own poems.
In English year 2 have been thinking about how characters feel. They have been thinking of words to describe this.
Year 6 examples of writing ( before editing and after editing)
In English we have been reading the story Esiotrot and we have LOVED it! Today we met Miss Hickson's tortoise!! He was very cute xx
In Year 4, Mr Hobley's group have spent time preparing and performing YouTube-style reviews of our book; The Lost Happy Endings.
We just love the book 'The Perfect Fit' by Naomi Jones! The characters are so kind and friendly and they have so much fun together. We recreated illustrations from the story and thought about what they would be saying. As usual we tried so hard to form our letters correctly and sound out words to help us with our spelling. We used our knowledge from past lessons on speech bubbles.
EYFS- Lots of fine motor and handwriting practise this week.
Our Reception class children have been engrossed in reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears. They have been practising their sentence writing by writing letters and speech bubbles. The children have also been using their knowledge of the story characters to act out the story and do some hot seating!
Our Year 1 children love 'Stickman' and Mr Wolf and his pancakes! The children have been learning about the use of speech bubbles and how to write instructions, lists and captions. Look at their wonderful writing!
Year 2 can use apostrophes!!
In Year 3 we love to share our work with our friends by reading it out to the class.
In our Year 3 English lessons we have been thinking about our favourite parts of the story, creating a word bank using words from the book and writing and editing our own stories.
Year 3 used story stones to re tell their own legends from the sea, inspired from their visit to the beach.
Year 6. As part of our read and respond comprehension lessons, the children discuss the meaning of new words, write down ideas and learn to explore all types of texts before answering questions with growing confidence.
