English
The Intent, Implementation and Impact of English at Victoria School
"The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself."
- Derek Walcott.
Intent
English is the foundation of our curriculum and equips our pupils with the necessary skills and knowledge to allow them to communicate effectively whilst developing passionate and literate young minds with vivid and excited imaginations.
English teaching builds on pupils’ spoken language as a starting point for communication. Pupils develop decoding and comprehension skills for reading building the effective transcription and composition skills to enable them to communicate effectively through writing. This supports our aim to ensure every pupil becomes primary literate and progress in the areas of reading, writing, drama and speaking and listening.
English at Victoria School is delivered not only as a daily discrete lesson, but is at the cornerstone of the entire curriculum.
Pupils use synthetic, systematic phonics from Early Years and throughout KS1 to develop their knowledge of the written word as units of sound and meaning and use this to build their skills of words and sentences.
As pupils progress through the school, teachers build upon pupils’ decoding skills to teach knowledge and understanding of more complex words and wider spelling patterns; using whole class reading, discrete teaching of spelling and the writing process to teach specific skills, as well as how to apply their knowledge to writing for genre and reading to different types of text.
Using high-quality texts, immersing pupils in vocabulary rich learning environments, and ensuring end of year curriculum expectations and progression of skills are met pupils will develop positive attitudes towards English.
Pupils exposed to a language rich, creative and continuous English curriculum which will not only enable them to become primary literate but also promotes a love of reading, creative writing and purposeful, speaking and listening.
At Victoria School, our vision is for our English curriculum to be the central to all our curriculum provision with reading as its driver.
“Reading is the key to unlock learning”
Implementation
We aim to ensure that all pupils develop the Core Skills in literacy essential for learning and life.
Pupils use and apply their literacy skills confidentially and competently in their learning and in everyday context. Pupils convey their ideas and opinions clearly and respond creatively and critically to a wide range of information and ideas.
- Read fluently listen and respond critically to text of all kinds on paper and on screen, in order to access ideas and information.
- Talk clearly and confidently about their thoughts opinions and ideas, listening carefully to others so that they can refine their thinking and express themselves effectively.
- Write, present and broadcast a range of ideas in a wide variety of forms and with awareness of different audiences and purposes, communicate these with accuracy on paper.
- Analyse, evaluate and criticise a range of uses of language in order to draw out meaning purpose and effect.
Impact:
The impact of our English Curriculum will be measured through our internal progress and assessment data to ensure that:
- Pupils have learnt the things they have been taught, based upon internal measures and teachers knowledge of how pupils have achieved their learning.
- Pupils understand the learning expectations in English.
- Strategies and programs are implemented for pupils who have increased needs and have not achieved the expected learning expectations based upon the entry predictions.
Teachers have evaluated the extent to which the aims and ambitions of the intent and implementation have been achieved.
For a more in-depth look at how we teach the different aspects of English please use the links below:-
