Curriculum Intent

At St. Anne's, our School English curriculum is intended to:

• Ensure teachers develop pupils' reading, writing, spoken language and vocabulary development across the curriculum in all subjects.
• Ensure all pupils are taught all programmes of study from the national curriculum.
• Be delivered through a planned sequence of learning to ensure pupils make strong progress and are ready for their next stage of learning.
• Be taught explicitly, as well as across the curriculum. e.g. through cross-curricular writing opportunities.

Reading

Reading is the cornerstone of the English Curriculum at St. Anne's.

Our school actively promotes and celebrates a love of reading, e.g. through book corners, our school library and daily class stories.  Accelerated Reader is used to identify and broad range of suitable, high quality texts for pupils, and to track their progress.

The English curriculum overview features a selection of high quality texts for each class, per half term.  These texts are shared and taught to pupils explicitly, in English and Class Reading lessons as well as being used to support cross-curricular learning.

Phonics is systematically taught to pupils in EYFS and KS1 as well as identified pupils in KS2.

Writing

Pupils should develop the skills to write for a range of purposes across the curriculum (with a clear awareness of audiences) developing accuracy in spelling, grammar and punctuation.  They should learn to write in a range of genres including narratives, reports, explanations, persuasion, discussions and poetry.

Spoken Language and Vocabulary Development

Fluency in the English Language is an essential foundation for success in all subjects and it is therefore important to embed oracy throughout the whole curriculum.  On a daily basis, pupils should communicate with peers and adults clearly, respectfully and appropriately in a range of situations, using Standard English and coherent sentences.  Appropriate and challenging vocabulary is taught and used across the curriculum.

Phonics and Spelling

St Anne's uses the Floppy's Phonics to deliver a high quality phonic program for our children. Floppy Phonics has been validated by the Department for Education (DfE) as an effective systematic synthetic phonics teaching programmes (SSP)  It introduces the children to the letters and sounds – the alphabetic code – that will become the foundation of their reading and writing.

Children in the Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1, have daily phonic sessions using this program. The sessions follow a set structure and provide children with the opportunity to master the phonic sounds, hear them at the start, in the middle and at the end of words and blend them to read words. The scheme provides a wide range of interactive resources including a reading scheme that follows each child's phonic development. Children bring home 'sound books' to practice the sounds they are learning in school, as well as matched reading books that allows a child to continue to practice the sounds they have already learnt and build their phonic knowledge step by step. 

Children are assessed each half term to ensure that they are making the progress expected. Children who require further support receive small group interventions to help them catch up and make progress.  

At the end of Year 1, the National Phonic Screening is carried out. Children who require more support in reaching the standard, are screened again the following year at the end of Year 2. 

All classes in school have daily reading activities. In KS1 and KS2 all children have a guided reading session each day. Children in KS2 who require further support with phonics continue to use the Floppy Phonic scheme and have their sessions delivered in small groups and on a 121 level daily.  

Following on from Floppy's Phonics, children move onto whole class spelling strategy lessons using the No Nonsense Spelling program.