English

Transforming lives through God’s embrace.

Charlton is a school of sanctuary, where spirituality is embraced in all its forms. As Jesus taught us, we love, support and celebrate our whole community. Our mission to widen horizons, nurture and challenge enables our children to become global citizens, who strive to make a positive impact on our world.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you” John 13:34

Our vision:

Today’s society sees our children living more and more online, with fewer opportunities to engage with reading, communication and literacy in general. These issues could be affecting some of our children. Our locality and the deprivation within our community does not readily provide children with opportunities to engage with reading and many of our families look to us to provide children with a life outside of a computer or television screen. Our school values underpin our English Curriculum. At Charlton CE Primary School, we believe that English and communication are key life skills. Through the English curriculum, we will help children develop the skills and knowledge that will enable them to communicate effectively and creatively through spoken and written language and equip them with the skills to become lifelong learners. English is at the heart of all children’s learning. 

Aims
All pupils at Charlton have opportunities to:

• Speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them; they will learn to listen and to be thoughtful. 
• Become fluent and critical readers which enables them to access all areas of the curriculum and the world beyond school, thus widening their horizons.
• Leave Charlton having developed a life-long love of reading and place value in written text, with an understanding of how reading for joy can positively impact their mental health and enable them to become effective citizens of the future.
• Have access to high quality teaching and learning of phonics, with staff setting high expectations of achievement.
• First master phonics in order to access the curriculum and thrive at school.
• ‘Keep up, not catch up’. Early identification of gaps in English enables us to intervene swiftly to enable a child to ‘keep up’.
• At termly pupil progress meetings, children are identified on provision maps and planned for accordingly for the following term by class teachers and senior leaders. 

Spoken English and Oracy

Speaking and listening skills are developed across the whole curriculum. It regularly precedes written work, giving children a chance to try out ideas before committing them to paper. We encourage various opportunities for the children to speak in public, from whole school assemblies and school council meetings to celebrations in the church and productions.

Children’s curiosity and inquisitiveness will lead to a deep interest in exploring and communicating with others. Their desire to communicate will support them in establishing positive relationships and in making valuable contributions through this communication.

The spoken word is a child's first opportunity to share their capability with others. As such we aim to model and develop ambitious and interesting vocabulary on which children can base their communication.  We have high standards for listening, which we take time to develop insuring children get as much as they can from any situation.  Speaking and listening is core to our curriculum and embeds all learning through discussion; talk partners play an integral role in learning within our school as does Talk for Writing.

Children will learn to speak clearly and accurately, allowing them to interact and communicate for a wide range of purposes. They will be confident and respectful in sharing their opinions and listening to the opinions of others. Their positive approach to oracy will help them to speak with concision and precision.

Reading

Reading is a fundamental skill and we encourage parents to join in the excitement of their children learning to read. We encourage children to read a wide variety of genres and to fully immerse themselves into stories and characters. As well as reading themselves, the children are also given plenty of opportunities to listen to high quality texts, authors and poets to help build on their vocabulary and love of reading. This not only takes place throughout the day but is also timetabled daily for 15 discrete minutes. Every class has its own book corner with a variety of books suited to a particular age group. The children also have access to the KS1 and KS2 library.

The reading culture will ensure that all children develop a life-long love of reading, whether it be for information, pleasure or other purposes. Children will be encouraged to respectfully express their opinions about a variety of texts through careful evaluation considering the context, purpose and audience.

Phonics and Early Reading 

We teach early reading through the systematic, synthetic phonics programme Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. Right from the start of Reception, children have a daily phonics lesson which follows the progression for Little Wandle Letters and Sounds and this continues in Year 1 to ensure children become fluent readers. We teach phonics for 20 minutes a day. In Reception, we build from 10-minute lessons, with additional daily oral blending games, to full-length lessons as quickly as possible. Each Friday, we review the week’s teaching to help children become fluent readers. Half termly assessments take place through Reception and Year 1 to help inform future teaching and to identify children who have gaps in their phonic knowledge and need additional practice. Daily assessment of learning also takes place within the classroom so staff can quickly identify any children who are in danger of falling behind and provide the appropriate daily ‘Keep Up’ intervention.

Reading Practice Sessions

Children in Reception, Year 1 and 2, read fully decodable books with an adult three times per week during our reading practice sessions. These books are then sent home for children to build their reading fluency and showcase their developing skills and phonetic knowledge to their parents/carers. Each reading practice session has a different focus; decoding, prosody (teaching children to read with understanding and expression) and comprehension. 

Spellings

After the children have completed the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme, they then move on to learning spelling rules. At Charlton Primary School, we focus on the rules, as the English language tends to follow set rules with a few irregularities. We will teach the children a rule a week following Spelling Shed. It may be a prefix or a suffix, it may be what happens when you change a word e.g. stop becomes stopped. Children will be sent home a few words and are able to play games through their EdShed login to help consolidate their learning. The spelling tests focus on a range of words, as we are testing the children's knowledge of the rule and phonics rather than their ability to learn a list of words. There are many additional spelling websites on the web that help children to learn their spellings with fun activities that you can do.

Writing and GPS

Fundamental writing skills will be secured so that they become automatic for all children, allowing them to write with fluency and confidence. They will grow their own style and technique, while maintaining technical and grammatical accuracy. Children’s writing skills will be future-proof, ensuring that we will equip them to meet and exceed the modern-day expectation.

We aim for all children to leave primary education with the necessary writing skills to support them in education, employment and wider life. They will write with accuracy and precision, consciously developing their own style as a writer. Children will be able to reflect on their written outcomes from across the curriculum, evaluating them carefully by considering the impact on the intended audience and using mistakes as opportunities to learn.

Teachers use a school designed approach to teach writing which incorporates:

• discreet skills teaching in each writing lesson
• elements of drama and oracy to embed language patterns and fluency
• creating a writers toolkit for each longer piece of writing
• Editing and proof-reading: we have designed our own system to develop these skills and promote independence. At the end of every piece of writing children complete an E1 edit (spelling and punctuation) to promote reflection and independence

Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation (including phonics) skills are taught daily and discreetly in all classes and then embedded in writing across the curriculum.

We use Language Through Colour school-wide to support both vocabulary development and spelling.

Targeted interventions are used to focus on children who need additional support or who need to ‘keep up’.

Presentation and handwriting

We believe presentation and handwriting skills are important so that the children are proud of their work and always aim high.  High expectations across all curriculum areas will lead to self-driven excellence in all that children do. Children will learn to take pride in their outcomes and to choose the most appropriate forms of transcription, depending on the context. 

We use Letter-join as the basis of our handwriting policy that covers all the requirements of the 2014 National Curriculum. Handwriting is a basic skill that influences the quality of work throughout the curriculum. At the end of Key Stage 2 all pupils should have the ability to produce fluent, legible and, eventually, speedy joined-up handwriting, and to understand the different forms of handwriting used for different purposes. We aim to make handwriting an automatic process that does not interfere with creative and mental thinking. 

We closely moderate and track the children’s progress in all areas of English to ensure children are making good progress. If areas for development are highlighted, these are acted upon swiftly in order to plug any gaps.