Intent
At Combs Infant School, English is an integral part of the curriculum. We plan an inclusive learning journey that allows all children to receive a rich education in reading, writing and speaking. We encourage children to articulate their thinking, be imaginative and to be successful. We want to immerse our children in stimuli to inspire them and present our pupils with creative opportunities to develop and apply their reading and writing skills across the curriculum.
At Combs Infant School, we want our children to be able to express themselves with confidence, and to communicate their ideas clearly. We strive to build a culture where reading for pleasure is valued. We intend for our children to build their knowledge and develop an increasingly wide range of vocabulary and grammar. Children should leave our school being able to use fluent and legible handwriting. The teaching of spelling is intended to show pupils how to understand the relationship between words, recognise spelling patterns and take with them a variety of useful strategies. We equip children with transferable skills which can be adapted to support them in all their learning.
Implementation
At Combs Infant School, our teaching of English is built upon the foundations of Development Matters and the National Curriculum. However, teachers ensure that our curriculum is enhanced and extended with additional skills and knowledge; as and when appropriate or necessary for our children. English lessons take place every day and are supplemented by additional daily reading sessions, alongside daily phonics and grammar lessons. English learning journeys make clear to the children what they are learning and often, follow the Talk for Writing model.
Reading is taught through primarily through our daily phonics sessions, enhanced by a daily blended approach of whole class, small grouped and individual reading sessions. We teach our children key reading skills and apply these to high quality texts. Children are encouraged to visit our school library, selecting from a range of authors and genres. Every term each class has a focus author. The children listen, read and discuss texts written by this specific author and find out facts about them. There is an outside reading area to help promote the love of reading surrounded by nature, a weekly book club and parents are invited in once a week, to read with their children. Children are expected to read at least five times a week at home, they are then rewarded with an incentive to motivate them. Developing readers have access to a reading scheme which is phonetically decodable. Intervention programmes such as precision teaching and paired reading provide timely support for those children who are falling behind their peers and it supports us in closing any gaps.
Writing is inspired by and planned around stimuli, which is selected by teachers, to engage their pupils. These include a combination of high quality texts, topic links or stimulating experiences. Through our English lessons our children are able to plan, edit, and evaluate their writing. We often use a Talk For Writing approach where children learn a text through actions and drama. They are encouraged to use innovation to change parts of the story or rewrite new endings. We actively look for opportunities for children to apply their writing skills across the curriculum.
Our school has a clear focus on the development of speech and language. We promote a rich and broad vocabulary development throughout the curriculum and use working walls, visual prompts and pre teach vocabulary. This helps children to make links and develop their speaking and listening, as well as their writing across the curriculum.
Grammar and spelling are mainly taught in context and through our daily phonics and grammar lessons. It is modelled through live and shared writing. High frequency words and tricky spellings are sent home for the children to practise and apply to sentence writing. Sending these spellings home also supports parents and carers in supporting their child to be successful. We also run a parent workshop at the beginning of each school year which include phonics, reading and early mark making. Parents are aware that we have an open door policy and teachers are also available daily to discuss any questions regarding the teaching of these areas and offer support.
We encourage fluent and legible handwriting. Teachers’ model clear and fluent handwriting daily and have high expectations of the children’s written work.
In early years, there are a high number of activities set up in the continuous provision to help strengthen the children’s fine motor skills. Children are surrounded by letters and words in different contexts in the early years and take part in weekly sessions of Dough Disco and Swiggle Whilst You Wiggle. At the beginning of Reception, children start to read and form and the individual letters of the alphabet moving on to CVC words. This leads on to the children combining these short words in to simple sentences using capital letters and full stops, ready for their big step in to year 1.
Impact
At Combs Infant School, we can judge the success of our English curriculum in the following ways:
Our rich curriculum must ensure that our pupils are academically prepared for life beyond our school and the wider world.