ENGLISH THROUGH LITERATURE

Our core aim at the heart of the English curriculum is to motivate children to become passionate and purposeful writers whilst making meaning and sense of the world around them. Underpinning this is the use of a rich and stimulating disparate range of literature designed to challenge, motivate and stimulate children’s imagination and understanding of the world around them. Each half term children study a picture book or class novel and use this as stimulus for their fictional writing. Children examine and manipulate key language, vocabulary and syntax whilst exploring characterisation, themes and genres of writing. Fostering and acquiring a strong and rich vocabulary supports pupils’ self-expression and ability to reason and articulate ideas

We believe strongly that through close guided reading of the text, all pupils acquire the internalisation of the rhythmic patterns of language and sentence construction which they can replicate and capitalise upon in their own unique writing style when writing independently. Through exploring high quality authorial texts, pupils gain an understanding of how to compose writing in different genres, writing for both engagement and purpose, and for a range of audiences

We sequence the curriculum to ensure all children begin to be exposed to the genres of English writing from Year 1 and develop cumatively their ability and skills each year in terms of depth and quality of writing to Year 6 Bigger picture concepts such as writing a report, diary or newspaper is distilled into sequenced and manageable learning Children interrogate a big picture outcome of what a successful genre looks like, they will study the grammatical and stylistic features. A further example is explored before children have the opportunity to write in the style of a genre at length. Genres will be revisited several times within the year.

Children explore genres such as recounts, explanations, narratives using the text as a foundation Teachers use a variety of tools to explore children’s meaning and understanding of language through the use of drama and role play, guided writing and examples of genres to analyse and interrogate. Research indicates that children learn to write through writing; adopting this approach we offer children the opportunity to write extended pieces in each genre and through high quality dialogic marking pupils improve their self-expression and ability to communicate in specialised genres of writing.

Grammar is weaved contextually into lessons with children reading and analyse live grammar through the texts they encounter. This in turn is incorporated into their own writing and self expression.

Adopting a transactional model of reading, we believe children bring their own knowledge and interpretation to a text and when they encounter a text there is a merging of the novel and their understanding of the world This element of personal growth is a core school curricula aim. Indeed, Harding describes the literature encounter as ‘when responding to great works of literature, the reader is changed and becomes something other than they were before’. We hope that children will become fluent, passionate writers engaged and fused with a sense of purpose and an ability to write for technical purposes and for pleasure.

Children have weekly drama sessions with a specialist teacher where they can explore aspects of the curriculum from a historical figure or a characters point of view in one of their novel studies. Pupils study Greek Mythology, Vikings, Romans in Britain, Goodnight Mister Tom, Charlotte’s Web, The Highwayman to name but a few aspects of the drama curriculum offer.

Pupils in Year 5 work with the Primary Shakespeare Company every year to put on a primary version of one of his most famous writings We have expert Shakespearian dramatists who hold sessions with the children at school and the unit culminates in a show involving a host of other schools which is held for parent’s at a local high school each year. It is a highlight of Year 5.

We also offer a lunchtime debating club hosted by two of our Key Stage 2 teachers which gives children a wonderful enrichment opportunity to develop their speaking and listening skills further.