Intent:
At Bosvigo, we want all our children to master the English language to empower them to communicate creatively and imaginatively, as well as allowing them to engage with the world at large. Pupils use their English skills within a broad and balanced curriculum; our curriculum strives to enable children to understand the ideas and opinions of others whilst also effectively communicating their own.
Children will develop a love of reading and broaden their view of the world by delving into a broad range of texts. They will use reading as a vehicle to develop their subject-specific knowledge; to widen their understanding of their own and other cultures and societies; build their emotional intelligence; and grow their imagination. Children will experience a rich language environment, using and understanding new vocabulary which will be explicitly and cumulatively taught.
Oracy will underpin their development of their writing skills and children will be able to write for a range of purposes through having a strong grasp of the appropriate grammar, punctuation and spelling.
Implementation:
At Bosvigo we use a rigorous programme of systematic synthetic phonics (RWI) which provides children with a tool to decode, before building fluency and the ability to comprehend and question independently. Children are taught and given guided practice in the skills and knowledge needed to be an active reader. We use high quality texts to explicitly teach the reading strategies expert readers use. The texts drive the skill to be taught and practiced: prediction, summarising, clarifying, visualising, connecting, inferring and questioning. Through the bespoke reading curriculum they explore a wide variety of genre, both fiction and non-fiction which allows them to access, input ideas and understand what they are reading. This is through our Talk Through Stories, Reading to Learn, Whole Class guided reading and book talk class novel. We foster a love of reading though well-chosen class novels, reading events, reading challenges and author visits. We run parental information sessions and invite parents in regularly.
The writing curriculum is implemented using The Write Stuff which follows a sentence stacking approach. Writers toolkits are explicitly used to teach the children the skills and knowledge they need to write effectively for a range of purposes, alongside discrete grammar, spelling and handwriting lessons.
Impact:
English is developed and assessed throughout the curriculum. Children demonstrate their English skills across a variety of subjects such as in their Reading To Learn sessions and Book Topic launch in EYFS. Children have the opportunity to peer and self edit to develop an understanding of their own goals as well as receiving meaningful feedback from their teachers. Children are also monitored using statutory assessment at the end of Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 as well as the Phonics Screening Test in Year 1 alongside non statutory assessments such as RWI assessments, and PIRA assessments. These assessment methods combine to create our rigorous triangulated monitoring system which allows us to demonstrate and reflect on the continued good progress made within English.
Enrichment:
Our children are given every opportunity to participate in a wide range of learning experiences beyond their classroom. These experiences including trips to museums, the local beaches and parks, and community projects provide children with stimulating real-life experiences to pin their reading, writing and speaking development to and drama workshops. They will meet and work with authors and build their knowledge of literature. English learning is practised and embedded across the curriculum. Speaking and writing outcomes draw from knowledge gained in other subjects and English skills are used to enhance learning elsewhere. Children learn to collaborate and learn from each other to achieve outcomes.