Curriculum - English

Hernhill Church of England Primary School has universal ambitions for every child, whatever their background or circumstances. Teachers are knowledgeable of and incorporate the Mainstream Core Standards to ensure all children learn and thrive at Hernhill.

 In order to engage all children, cultural diversity, home languages, gender and religious beliefs are celebrated. Our curriculum includes a wide range of texts and other resources, which represent the diversity and backgrounds of all our children.

• Children will enjoy writing across a range of genres
• Children of all abilities will be able to succeed in their English lessons because provision will be put in place for learners with SEND taking into account all learners’ individual needs (Mainstream Core Standards)
• Children will have a wide vocabulary that they use within their writing
• Children will have a good knowledge of how to adapt their writing based on the context and audience
• Children will leave primary school being able to effectively apply spelling rules and patterns they have been taught
• Parents and carers will have a good understanding of how they can support spelling, grammar and composition at home, and contribute regularly to homework
• There will be no significant gaps in the progress of different groups of children (e.g. disadvantaged vs non-disadvantaged).

SPEAKING AND LISTENING

We recognise the importance of spoken language in pupils’ development across the whole curriculum – spoken language underpins the development of reading and writing. Children are encouraged to develop effective communication skills in readiness for later life. Opportunities to develop these skills include leading prayers, annual class assembles, celebration assemblies, response partners, school plays and productions.

READING

 We use the Phonics Shed programme to deliver daily discrete phonics lessons in the Foundation Stage and KS1, enabling children to decode efficiently. Phonics books are carefully matched to the children’s learning in class. Phonics Booster groups are used for children struggling in class and who require extra support. Toe By Toe and Dyslexia Gold are also used throughout the school as an intervention.

A range of reading schemes are used to support readers up to the end of Year 4. In the Upper juniors, children are encouraged to select and read books independently to further promote a love of reading. This is alongside targeted whole-class quality texts. For children who require extra support, Barrington Stoke ‘real’ books are available in the Upper juniors, as well as access to schemes such as Wellington Square.

 Children across the school have access to Lexia Core 5: an online program that focuses on six aspects of reading instruction - phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and structural analysis. 

WRITING

We aim to develop the children’s ability to produce well-structured, detailed writing in which the meaning is made clear and which engages the interest of the reader. Attention is paid throughout the school to the formal structures of English, grammatical detail, punctuation and spelling. To support our teaching of writing, staff refer to a range of strategies shared by experts in the field (for example, Jane Considine’s ‘The Write Stuff’); teachers are flexible in their selection of any Literacy experts’ strategies to suit the needs of the child and the text type being taught.

 The children are given frequent opportunities in school to write in different contexts using quality texts as a model and for a variety of purposes and audiences. The text types are outlined in our whole-school long term plans to ensure that there is a breadth of coverage.