English 3Is

Throckley Primary School English – Intent, Implementation and Impact Intent At Throckley Primary School, we know that in order to provide a high-quality education, which will help prepare our pupils for their futures, children must have a solid grasp on all aspects of English: reading, writing, grammar and spelling. As Throckley Primary has literacy at the core of our ambitious curriculum, we help inspire our pupils’ curiosity and provide pupils with crucial skills that are fundamental to unlocking all subjects in the curriculum and, equally as important, help them to explore the world around them, through secondary school and beyond.

Our curriculum is driven by key questions, big ideas and the understanding that all of our learning is linked through experience, conversations and connections, which unite us with the world around us. Focused on the key concepts of belonging, choice and influence; and supported by the study of significant people and rich stories, our curriculum is designed to help children develop their sense of self and their aspirations for the future.

Everything begins with our curriculum drivers. They are woven through all that we do and underpin our shared belief that our role is to support children with the following:

Understanding our place in the world For centuries, words have been our most powerful tool in helping generations recognise their past, to help understand their present in order to better inform their future. At Throckley Primary, we share this love of vocabulary and the magic of words. Through reading a range of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and traditional tales, our children are immersed in a breadth of vocabulary to help them explore their place in the local community, their nation and the world, and use these texts as fuel to write their own musings on the world they live in to help continue this cycle.

Aspiring to achieve Through rich stories, pupils meet significant people (from the past and present), who have left an everlasting imprint of our world. By introducing pupils to these figures within English lessons, or other subjects across the curriculum and story time, important themes, values and lessons are shared. Reading inspirational stories, begins to open ours minds to the possibilities of our future and allow us to set aspirations we wish to achieve.

Broadening Horizons The literary world takes many shapes and sizes and holds a whole range of possibilities. It is an area where imagination can take hold and transport us to different cities, countries or realms. Through a variety of carefully chosen books, children at Throckley are introduced to places beyond the school gates and meet people from the past and around the world. By putting the stories into context, we bring to life the sense of curiosity, exploration and discovery and, in turn, evoke these ambitions in our children.

Rich stories and books are the building blocks of our curriculum. Here at Throckley Primary, we see books at the centre of all learning for our pupils of all ages. Early reading is of the utmost importance; sharing stories, rhymes and books with pupils in early years helps them to practise vocabulary, understand the world around them through aiding their curiosity,

imagination and eagerness to thrive. To encourage this through school, each year group has a reading library. Our Throckley Primary reading bookshelves outline the stories shared in each year group, while our Must Reads give structure to children’s reading diet. The books have been carefully selected to ensure a wealth of authors, genres, cultures and communities are explored so that all of our children are able to relate to these inspiring stories. Sharing these stories with pupils allows them to connect to other people, understand and experience shared ideas, explore history and values, as well as develop key emotional intelligence skills.

Through exploring exciting books not only in English, but across the curriculum will help spark a love of reading for life.

Our English curriculum is diligently sequenced to ensure that knowledge gained is cumulative; this aids apt progression as well as frequently providing pupils with the opportunity to draw on knowledge from previous year groups through our bespoke spaced retrieval strategies. Through this, our pupils understand the importance of the knowledge they gain through their English lessons while at Throckley and how it can be transferred to all areas of the curriculum. Providing pupils with these opportunities to put it into practice what they have learnt, we aim to ensure they are not only secondary school ready but can apply what they’ve learnt from primary school to their future career paths.

Woven into every English lesson, the Throckley OWLs (Our Wonderful Learners) encourage positive learning behaviours and support children in developing the skills that we believe are necessary for success in the wider world. At Throckley Primary School, we encourage children to use our OWLs to actively plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning within English lessons, especially when building up to an authentic, written outcome.

By channelling a specific OWL, pupils are able to develop transferable skills that they can use within the subject of English in order to develop metacognitive skills. They can understand how they learn best or what tools they can use to aid their knowledge of the English language.

Once assured of the behaviour the OWLs symbolise, they can apply them throughout their lives so that they are resilient and confident learners.

Class teachers plan units of lessons according to the progression of knowledge and skills documents for English. These are structured around a class text that has been purposefully selected. While reading the book, teachers begin to sequence their lessons to build up to a written outcome, which excites and enthuses the pupils. During these lessons, children will practise skills that enable them to successfully complete the task. In order to ensure coverage of a range of writing purposes (to inform, to entertain, to discuss and to persuade), audiences, layouts and grammatical devices, class teachers use the English overview and individual year group long-term plans. This allows pupils to build on past pieces of writing by applying previous skills as well as combining it with new concepts to ensure progression.

Implementation The English curriculum has been carefully mapped out to ensure revisiting of key knowledge throughout the year, whether this be through basic skill inputs, starters, interventions, or whole class teaching. Class teachers’ planning incorporates time to recap previous learning to then build on knowledge and understanding in new, related areas of study. When possible, class books are chosen to fit with an area of study across the curriculum; this allows purposeful links to be made, meaning that knowledge and understanding is consolidated in both English and another subject within the curriculum. The skills and knowledge imparted in each unit are derived from the National Curriculum and expanded upon to ensure that all children meet a high standard and minimum requirement, from which class teachers can augment knowledge and conceptual understanding based on the individuals within their cohort.

We value the power of authentic experience; learning is brought to life AND given relevance and meaning. Class teachers therefore carefully select purposeful, verbal and written outcomes to mark the end of a piece of work linked to the class text. Supporting our key driver of ‘Broadening Horizons’, pupils practise a range of key skills to showcase the learning they’ve embedded over the half term through completing two pieces of extended writing in the half term, which is close-marked by class teachers using Throckley Writers Targets. This could be through a written letter, a debate, writing a postcard or diary entry, taking on a journalistic approach by writing for a newspaper or creating a piece of poetry and delivering it aloud to peers to hear. It is through these outcomes, we hope to inspire our pupils’ writing and open their eyes to a world of possibilities, where English is at the forefront. As well as this, across the curriculum, children are given opportunities to write at length in a range of subjects to practise embedding subject-specific vocabulary and write in a range of styles.

In order to ensure our pupils experience high-quality English lessons, staff share a passion for evidence-informed practice and value Rosenshine’s principles of instruction and these can be seen in practice in classrooms across school. As well as this, through school-based action research into talk in the classroom, staff have a passion for encouraging pupils to articulate their ideas to peers on a book or writing before writing them down. Within English lessons, talk between children and teachers is a focus, to help analyse class books and an author’s style of writing and the impact this can have as a reader. We believe it is important our pupils develop confidence in sharing their ideas and thoughts as well as, supporting their peers with communicating their own.

What will I see if I visit a lesson in Throckley Primary School?

Creative, dynamic and passionate teachers: At Throckley Primary, we love learning. Class Teachers work collaboratively to weave all aspects of English into lessons to make learning exciting and purposeful. Individual teachers choose a focus for the writing that encapsulates their classes’ interests.

Clear, detailed explanations and modelling: We fully understand the importance of teaching being explicitly clear, and tailored to individual need. When building up to a written outcome, the use of WAGOLLs and WABOLLs (What a good/bad one looks like) means that expectation is clear and children are scaffolded during independent practice. Children across school are taught to analyse shared examples in order to identify key ingredients for a success criteria that can be displayed on the English working wall. Support is layered; class teachers’ keen understanding of assessment allows them to know each child as an individual and know when the time is right to remove a of support, guiding the child to independence, at a pace right for them.

Quality talk: During English lessons or story time, children are given frequent opportunities to share their thoughts and opinions with peers by using age-appropriate prompts in the classroom. Children are encouraged to challenge and extend their own and peers thinking to help deepen their understanding of a class book and/or a piece of writing.

Skilful teacher questioning: A commitment to staff training in this area has led to a teaching team that is skilled in using questioning to support learners in reaching their potential. A mix of strategies allow class teachers to direct questions to individuals where necessary, or use a ‘no hands up approach’ to allow children to contribute freely. To stretch children to the appropriate cognitive level, class teachers use prompts and cues to extend thinking. To develop this further, class teachers probe for reasoning and clarification, and, as pupils move further up the school, they are taught to give full, detailed and reasoned responses.

Spaced retrieval of key learning: Across school, we have developed a number of strategies, which support children in the recall, and retention of key knowledge in English. These are

drawn upon during regular, low-stakes assessments and prior to the teaching of new, yet related, content.

Well-selected, mapped vocabulary: Vocabulary is at the forefront of learning in English as pupils are expected to be confident using subject-specific vocabulary to identify grammatical devices and other aspects of the English curriculum. As well as this, when reading the class book and supplementary texts, new vocabulary is discussed and taught through a range of tasks such as, Frayer models, thesaurus work and synonym and antonyms practice. These are displayed either on a vocabulary display or the English working wall and staff encourage children to practise using this vocabulary in their conversations and writing.

Clear learning intentions and tasks, which are appropriately challenging: We value the Blooms Taxonomy framework and this underpins learning sequences across the curriculum.

Building areas of study around Blooms allows us to build factual, conceptual, procedural and metacognitive knowledge, resulting in fuller understanding and greater depth. Our aim is for children to remember key knowledge, but also to develop a full understanding of it in order to then apply this in context, creating authentic outcomes, which draw on their learning experience over time.

Resilient, independent learners: At Throckley Primary School, we teach children metacognitive strategies, including how to plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning.

Shared success criteria allow children to have ownership of their learning and support them to be able to monitor their progress. Shared and verbalised class teacher thinking also models the thinking process for children and this is evident across school.

Our Wonderful Learners (OWLs) have been created to support children’s metacognitive development. Our OWLs encapsulate six learning behaviours, which we believe are integral to success both in school and beyond: Classroom scaffolds and displays allow children to see what each behaviour looks like in practice. As children move up the school, they are taught to independently identify the learning behaviour needed for a given task. OWLs support children’s self-regulation and also provide scaffolds for group and paired work.

Beautiful Work: At Throckley Primary, we celebrate beautiful work! Driven by our value of ‘pride’, we teach children the importance of well-presented, carefully planned work. Children are proud to display their outcomes; resilience, effort and progress are praised.

Inviting, cosy reading areas: Within every classroom, you will find a nook, where pupils are able to visit and enjoy the book they are currently reading. Within these spaces, children can find a breadth of books that cover all genres and are linked to current learning from across the curriculum to allow them to develop specific interests and passions that they can read into further.

In the spotlight working walls: On the wall of every classroom, English working walls can be found, where the current whole class text is ‘in the spotlight’ for children to investigate and explore. Each display is split in half, so that reading around the book is regularly updated to support pupils with character facts, key moments within the narrative and questions they have regarding the book so far. The other half shows ‘Throckley Writers’. When building up to an extended piece of writing, class teachers update this half with: grammatical devices which have been studied; the purpose for writing, audience and layout the writing will take (PAL); modelled writing examples to provide children with examples of what they will be doing; examples of WAGOLLS that have been analysed; a success criteria, which is added to as the sequence of lessons progress; and key vocabulary that has been discovered on route to the writing that pupils would need to use their work.

Spelling/ phonics displays: In every classroom, support with spelling or phonics is displayed permanently to guide children with their spelling rule of the week. Phonics posters are on display in EYFS and KS1 classrooms to act as an aid to pupils when writing or reading.

Impact At the heart of our curriculum here at Throckley Primary lies basic skills in maths and English.

Through our bespoke English curriculum, we hope to have inspired pupils through the texts they have read and subsequent writing opportunities it led to. By exploring a range of texts and genres during their time here, pupils are able to develop their own reading diet and have a love of books that they take with them on their next steps of education. At Throckley Primary, pupils will have confidence when writing at length and take pride in the work they produce, ensuring they incorporate a range of skills they’ve developed over their time at school. Due to their key grasp on all aspects of the English curriculum, they are able to self-assess their writing and provide insightful, constructive feedback to their peers to further develop their work.

From their lessons, pupils will understand the importance of English as a stand alone subject, but how it is woven into all aspects of curriculum.

Class teachers regularly assess children formatively against each curriculum statement using the progression documentation and reading, writing, spelling and phonics targets. Teachers have progression statements to aid in assessing in detail what each standard looks like for each year group and objective. Progress and outcomes are decided upon using a combination of summative assessments, formative evaluation and evidence over time in children’s books.

Children’s progress against statutory knowledge and skills objectives is closely tracked by teachers using SIMs assessment grids. Crucially, pupil-book study, founded on the delicately structured evocation of the children’s learning in their own terms, forms the lynchpin of monitoring English learning from EYFS to Year 6. This ensures that the subject leader is confident of the success of the curriculum through the lens of those for whom it must be crafted.

Through participating in English lessons and a range of English events (Roald Dahl Day, National Poetry Day, National Word Day and World Book Day), children are able to explore all aspects of English and begin to delve into the different career paths linked to this subject.

From this exposure to a range of different important dates and significant people across the English sphere from various backgrounds, all children understand that they are poets, writers, authors and journalists and are capable of achieving amazing things and contributing to literature in the future. #ThriveAtThrockley