Sound English skills are essential for progress across the curriculum and to prepare pupils effectively for tasks of adult life.
All teachers have a responsibility to develop pupils’ competence in reading, writing, speaking and listening in their own subjects and to ensure that pupils become competent users of language, and can access the curriculum effectively and achieve their potential.
Burtonwood Community Primary School:
- Recognises the effect that a confident, fluent and coherent understanding of English will have on a pupil’s progress, both inside and outside of the school environment.
- Understands how a strong grounding in English will impact the future learning and development of a pupil in all aspects of their life
- Provides a balanced and broad curriculum which encompasses writing practice, including handwriting, spelling, widening vocabulary, and writing for different styles, purposes, and audiences, as well as focussing on spoken English, reading, grammar and pronunciation.
- Ensures that all staff members are aware of planning, assessment, teaching and learning requirements for the English curriculum.
- Ensures that all pupils know how to plan, practise and evaluate their work.
- Ensures that all pupils understand all elements of English, as per the national curriculum.
English Documents
We follow Bug Club phonics scheme and independent reading scheme throughout the school.
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Over 300 wonderful book titles with well-known and family-favourite characters across a wide range of genres including fiction, non-fiction, plays, and poetry.
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Inside cover notes in each book to help you and your children know how to deepen understanding.
We use Pathways to Read for our guided sessions within class from Y2-Y6 and Bug Club Guided Read from EYFS.
- Pathways to Read is designed to equip the child with key skills to move them through the reading process towards becoming competent and fluent readers.
- Bug Club Guided Read scheme is used from Lilac to Lime book bands. Children then progress on to Pathways to Read for their guided sessions.
- Year 2 begin Pathways to Read by using the whole class read, supplemented with Bug Club guided sessions.
Reading Documents
Support for Reading
Useful Videos
What should an expected KS1 reader read like?
What should an expected KS2 reader read like?
Children in Year 6 talking about a text
Reception and KS1 follow Bug Club phonics scheme and reading scheme.
This is continued into KS2 for intervention.
Phonics Resources
In KS1 and KS2, we use some of the Pathways to Write units or have adapted our own units in a similar style.
Pathways to Write is a proven methodology built around units of work which develop vocabulary, reading and writing skills through the mastery approach.
Writing
Support for Grammar & Punctuation
KS2 use Spelling Shed to support them with learning their spelling rules.
Spelling
At Burtonwood, we follow the Letter Join Handwriting Scheme across the school.
At Burtonwood we are very proud of our pupil’s handwriting and take particular care in our handwriting style. We use Letter-join’s on-line handwriting resource and Lesson Planners as the basis of our handwriting policy as it covers all the requirements of the National Curriculum.
Objective
Handwriting is a basic skill that influences the quality of work throughout the curriculum. By the end of Key Stage 2 all pupils should have the ability to produce fluent, legible and, eventually, speedy joined-up handwriting, and to understand the different forms of handwriting used for different purposes.
Our intention is to make handwriting an automatic process that does not interfere with creative and mental thinking.
Aims:
- To develop a neat, legible, speedy handwriting style using continuous cursive letters, which leads to producing letters and words automatically in independent writing.
- To establish and maintain high expectations for the presentation of written work.
- For pupils to understand, by the end of Year 6, the importance of neat presentation and the need for different letterforms (cursive, printed or capital letters) to help communicate meaning clearly.
