English

English Intent

‘The overarching aim for English in the national curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written language, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment.’

National curriculum 2014

At Seymour Primary school English is broken down into reading, writing and speaking and listening. Within these areas, we teach phonics, fluency, comprehension, composition, grammar, spelling, handwriting and oracy skills.

Our aim is that all children will leave us in Year 6 with the ability to:

• confidently communicate and express their ideas and thoughts
• communicate using a rich and wide vocabulary
• read easily and fluently with a good understanding
• read for pleasure and to further their learning
• write clearly, accurately and coherently
• write for a range of different purposes including creative and informative

English Implementation

At Seymour Primary School we teach English through “Read Write Inc” (RWI), Accelerated Reader, TKAT whole class reading spine and Talk for Writing. 

We are a passionate and dedicated “Read Write Inc” (RWI) school and believe phonics are the vital foundations for our children becoming successful readers. Our younger readers follow the “Read Write Inc” (RWI) scheme when learning to read. This scheme places an emphasis on developing a strong understanding of synthetic phonics as well as reading for meaning, so children quickly develop understanding of texts alongside their ability to decode words.

We believe developing children’s fluency and comprehension skills is vital. We successfully use the Accelerated Reader programme from Year 2 onwards to encourage children with reading at home and support them to further develop their reading skills. 

We feel it is important to expose our children to a rich and wide variety of books that promote children’s passion for reading for pleasure. We follow the TKAT’s whole class reading spine to develop children’s ability to become skillful readers by encouraging them to think critically and questions concepts while reading.

The Talk for Writing approach is successfully embedded throughout our school from Early Years to Year 6. The approach enables children to become confident and independent writers by teaching them the toolkits to be able to write for a variety of purposes and audiences. We underpin our English curriculum by having a core reading spine of quality fiction, poetry and non fiction that all children draw upon when reading as writers and writing as a readers.