At Pocklington Church of Engand VC Infant school our English curriculum provides pupils with the knowledge, understanding and skills they need to reach their full potential.
Our aim is for our children to become independent readers who can choose their own books to read and develop their love of reading. We place a great emphasis on children being read to and having access to high quality literature to read and share.
The ability to communicate through the written word is a key skill which we intend our pupils to be able to do with confidence and accuracy. We intend that every child develops a progressive understanding of grammatical conventions and to progress from phonetically plausible spellers to efficiently applying spelling rules and become proficient spellers. We intend that all children will be able to have a neat, legible and efficient handwriting style.
Spoken language and listening skills are central to our curriculum and these are developed throughout the school. We nurture our pupils’ speaking and listening skills so that they are able to express their own ideas clearly and confidently in a safe, supportive and stimulating environment. We enhance pupils’ speaking and listening skills through exploratory play, language rich story time and talk partners. We develop these skills so that our children are capable of expressing their own ideas clearly and with confidence in an environment where everybody’s views are respected and valued.
Our English scheme of work enables pupils to meet the end of key stage attainment targets in the National curriculum and the EYFS Framework.
“Reading feeds the imagination, it expands horizons and offers new and exciting ways of seeing and making sense of our lives and of the world around us.” Michael Morpurgo
“Every child is a natural born writer.” Carole Marsh
At Pocklington Church of England VC Infant School, in the Early Years Foundation Stage English is taught through the lens of ‘ Communication and Language’ and ‘Literacy’’. The children have regular opportunities to develop their English knowledge and skills through adult-led opportunities and through continuous provision.
Our progression of skills and knowledge document specifies National Curriculum objectives to be taught in each year group each term.
We teach Phonics and Reading through our daily Read Write Inc lessons. Children are grouped based on their reading stage not age, ensuring that their learning is targeted at the gaps in their knowledge, which have been identified by regular assessments. Children who are behind age-related expectations are given specific 1:1 tuition by trained TAs to ensure rigour, fidelity and progression in the phonetic skills of decoding and fluency. Our staff have received training from specialist RWI trainers along with support from the English Hub.
In KS1 we follow a Mastery approach to English through the programme ‘Pathways to Write.’ Units of work are delivered using high quality texts and children in all year groups are given varied opportunities for writing. Skills are built up through repetition within the units, and children apply these skills in the writing activities provided. Many opportunities for widening children’s vocabulary are given through the Pathways to Write approach and this builds on the extensive work we do in school to provide our children with a rich and varied vocabulary.
You will find the end of year expectations for writing for each of our year groups in the attached documents. For further detail on the skills that your children are learning on a termly basis, please see the year group webpage ‘what is your child learning this term’ document.
In KS1 we follow a mastery approach to the teaching of spelling through the programme ‘Pathways to Spell’. It is a programme designed to deliver the statutory content of the Primary National Curriculum for spelling in key stage 1. Through weekly teaching of spelling objectives and development of a whole school approach to word transcription, vocabulary development and proof-reading, the programme aims to develop children as proficient spellers.
You will find the end of year expectations for spelling for each of our year groups in the attached documents. For further detail on the skills that your children are learning on a termly basis, please see the year group webpage ‘what is your child learning this term’ document.
In KS1 we follow the Oak Academy handwriting curriculum which is sequenced and aligned to the national curriculum. Pupils learn to write lower case letters in print, capital letters and numerals. Some children will go on to learn how to join letters and begin to write in cursive.
Across the school we aim to promote a love of reading, and teachers aim to have a daily teacher story session to introduce children to a range of texts, which give all children the opportunity to access a broader range of literature and vocabulary. We are working with the English Hub to develop our reading culture acorss the school.
We promote parents and carer involvement through communication, workshops, support resources to practise reading at home and special events.
Our pupils thoroughly enjoy our extra-curricular club which helps our Year 2 pupils hone their writing, editing, proofreading and presentation skills.