English Curriculum
English Overview
Our vision at Spring Meadow is for all children to develop a lifelong love of English and an enjoyment for literature. All children are provided with a great range of opportunities to develop and apply their English skills across the curriculum.
We aim to equip all children with the essential skills they will need for the rest of their educational journey and future careers. By the time they leave our school, we aim for all children to be able to express themselves clearly, both orally and in writing, take part in discussions, read fluently and have a broad and varied vocabulary. We ensure that all children are supported and encouraged to have high aspirations so they can reach their full potential.
Writing
Intent
At Spring Meadow, we strive for all children to be able to coherently express their creative ideas in writing and be confident in writing for a variety of purposes and audiences. We aim for all children to form clear legible handwriting and to be joining letters by the end of KS1. Writing is an essential skill that they will need throughout their lives therefore we hope to prepare them for this.
Implementation
Through our use of high quality texts, we foster children's interest in writing giving them a clear audience and purpose. Children are taken on a writing journey which builds their knowledge of writing for context and purpose. The progressive curriculum builds on prior knowledge from previous years allowing the children to explore a variety of genres. The writing continuum builds in the crucial skills of planning, drafting and re-drafting their writing. Grammatical skills and spelling structures are linked to the writing genre studied and underpin the writing process. We will broaden our children's exposure to high level vocabulary and build opportunities for the new vocabulary to be used in context and in other areas of the curriculum. We want our children to apply their understanding of vocabulary and grammatical features within and across the English and the wider curriculum as well as learning spelling strategies.
Our curriculum and high expectations ensure that our children develop a strong level of written English. From Nursery, we promote a passion for writing and create a comfortable, sharing environment across our school community where children take pride in their work. Our whole school Talk4writing approach encourages children to orally tell stories: ones they have read or listened to, as well as their own adaptations of these or even their own stories entirely. This leads to our children having a true enjoyment of stories and becoming great storytellers full of ideas that they can then put into their writing. We create exciting opportunities for the children and give them real-life experiences to write about.
We regularly practise the mechanics of handwriting and have high expectations that clear handwriting is used in all subjects. Spelling is taught both within main English sessions as well as focused independent sessions. These sessions cover specific spelling rules, as well as all common exception words.
Impact
As a result we have a staff who are equipped with the confidence, skills and resources to tailor the curriculum to the needs of our learners. We have children who are positive about writing and are proud to share their written work. They value and praise each other and can identify strengths and next steps in their own and each other’s writing. They have an awareness of the audience and a clearly defined purpose for writing and can articulate what that is.
