Ashlands Primary School

English at Ashlands

Aims

We aim to develop all of our pupils’ speaking, listening, reading and writing skills through our Integrated Curriculum. English is intricately linked to this curriculum to make learning purposeful and provide a context for reading and writing tasks. Through quality texts children acquire a love for reading and writing whilst developing their knowledge and understanding. Our aim is that children will leave Ashlands Primary School, secondary school ready, and with a love for the subject.

Pupils at Ashlands Primary School will leave Year 6:

• reading and writing with confidence, fluency and understanding, using a range of independent strategies to self-monitor and correct
• with a love of reading and writing and a desire to read and write for enjoyment
• with an interest in words and their meanings; developing a growing vocabulary in spoken and written forms
• understanding a range of text types, media types and genres
• able to write in a variety of styles and forms appropriate to the situation
• using their developing imagination, inventiveness and critical awareness
• having a suitable, technical vocabulary to articulate their responses and able to express their opinions

Reading

It is through a stimulating literature rich environment and many varied opportunities to read and celebrate reading that we endeavour to develop a lifelong love of reading in our children. This love of reading and books translates into a desire to write and communicate thoughts, feelings and ideas. Children are given opportunities to read frequently with teachers, teaching assistants and volunteers. In addition, many exciting and rewarding activities are arranged to promote the pleasure and knowledge which can be gained from books; whole school themed days, weekly buddy reading with upper KS2, visiting authors and World Book Day. All children are encouraged to take home books from the school library. The library has a wide variety of fiction and non- fiction books which are relevant to the curriculum and the interests and ages of the children. We provide the children with regular opportunities to read for pleasure and find out about learners’ reading habits and interests. We enjoy class conversations about what learners are currently reading for pleasure, what they are enjoying/ not enjoying, and as a class we share our recommendations. Learners are encouraged to try new formats / genres / authors and parents are readily supported.

Writing

We aim to develop the children’s ability to produce well structured, detailed writing in which 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. An emphasis is also placed on the creative writing process and children use their imaginations and creativity to implement the skills they have learnt when writing independently. All writing is celebrated across school via displays, assemblies and ‘Share and Celebrate’ sessions, where parents are invited into school to see the fantastic work the children have been doing.

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