LHPS English Curriculum Design

Guiding Principles

Our English curriculum ensures children spend longer being taught the common features and skills in reading and writing in order to have a more coherent English curriculum and therefore be able to develop mastery in English.  Our main is aim to for all pupils to develop a love of reading as well as the necessary skills needed in writing for life and be able to access future learning successfully.

Core Beliefs

Appreciate

Aspire

Achieve

An English curriculum that develops every child’s ability to appreciate, care, respect and understand themselves, others and the world in which they live. A curriculum that also ensures that every child feels valued and cared for.

An English curriculum that provides a range of opportunities, designed to empower every child to ‘dream big’ and develop a sense of what is possible for them to achieve now and in their future lives.

An English curriculum that ensures all children have the skills, knowledge, attitude and social understanding to achieve in all aspects of their lives  and equip them to become active and engaged citizens.

Curriculum

Approach

• The Curriculum has been adapted using various methods such as; placing reading at the heart of the curriculum, using high quality texts as the starting point , maintaining a strong focus on grammar and how our use of language can affect the reader or audience and, ensuring our English curriculum is meaningful through connecting it to other curriculum areas.
• Teaching is underpinned by using high quality texts and high quality examples from the teacher, which focus on skills to be taught. These texts are then analysed in depth with the children in order for them to learn and apply those skills. The children are taught to read as writers and write as readers.
• Reading is taught through whole class lessons across the week which aim to teach the children the essential skills needed to in order to become a confident and fluent reader. Children who are slower to progress are supported with a reading intervention.

1. Reading begins in Foundation Stage through sharing books with simple or no text so that the children can learn how to tell a story by building language using images. 
2. Children are encouraged to explain and justify their thinking when answering comprehension questions.
3. Structured high quality opportunities for speaking and listening are used to develop children’s language skills as well as to support writing and reading.
4. The children then apply their skills in independent pieces of writing, which are finally edited and improved by the individual child as well as receiving some input from their peers. Teachers use shared and modelled writing to help nurture the children’s fluency and creativity.

•  Writing and authorial skills are taught progressively throughout a child’s educational journey at Lunt’s Heath Primary School. Beginning in the early years, children are taught spelling patterns and simple sentence building skills to developing a deeper knowledge and understanding of writing skills and stamina needed for writing extended compositions in a variety of genres.
• Grammar and punctuation skills are practised and consolidated until all children have a firm understanding of how to apply them in to their written compositions.
• Teachers use precise questioning in class to develop the children’s thinking and explanations, helping children to make literary choices in their writing. 
• Teachers reinforce an expectation that all pupils are capable of achieving high standards in English. 
• All staff use a reflective approach to each lesson to evaluate learning and to plan next steps for all children.
• Interventions focus on gaps in knowledge and developing a growth mind-set in order to ensure all children achieve.
• English is largely taught in mixed ability groups as we believe all children can achieve.  Using this approach, all children are exposed to some higher-level thinking questions and problem-solving, as well as having the opportunity to collaborate and develop a growth mind-set through working with their peers. Children have opportunities to work both collaboratively and independently.
• The majority of pupils progress through the curriculum content at the same pace. Differentiation is achieved through additional support and encouraging children’s individual flair and fluency. 

Impact

By the time a pupil leaves Lunt’s Heath Primary School in Year 6, they will be confident communicators who have a mastery of language, read with fluency and understanding, recognise the nuance of vocabulary choice, including academic, subject specific vocabulary and  have the knowledge and skills to reflect their understanding of audience and purpose in their writing.