English
Welcome to the English information page
Here you will find lots of information to help you understand your child’s learning and to support their understanding of literacy when working at home.
We hope you find the information useful. If you have any suggestions or queries regarding this page please contact Mrs G Farrimond (KS1 English Lead) or Ms M Lalsing (KS2 English Lead)
Latest News
- Children from across school helped celebrate 'National Poetry Day' on Thursday 4th October. Children performed poetry of their choice (some children even performed their own poems) in our outdoor amphitheatre. Parents stopped to watch their performance and 8:30 am and the performers also drew large crowds at their lunchtime performance! Well done to all of our performers! You can see some pictures of their poetry in action further down the page.
- Please ensure that you are listening to your child read at home. They have a reading journal where you can comment and sign your name. For Key Stage 2 there are also suggested questions that you might ask your child to see if they have understood their reading book.
- Better reading has started again in Key Stage 1 where chosen children read twice weekly to a volunteer.
- If you are available to help support reading in school please speak to your child’s class teacher. Many thanks for your support.
- Parents workshops will be available soon please check the website and newsletter for more information in the near future. Previous workshops have focussed on targeted questioning during a reading session and proved to be successful and were well attended.
- The New Curriculum for English came into effect from September 2014
What’s new?
- Stronger emphasis on vocabulary development, grammar, punctuation and spelling (for example, the use of commas and apostrophes will be taught in KS1)
- Spoken English has a greater emphasis, with children to be taught debating and presenting skill.
- Handwriting – not currently assessed under the national curriculum – is expected to be fluent, legible and speedy.
Each collection exemplifies one pupil’s writing that meets the requirements for the statements within the interim TA framework for one of the following standards:
• Working towards the expected standard
• Working at the expected standard
• Working at greater depth within the expected standard.
Moderated Writing
Talk for Writing
"Talk for Writing, developed by Pie Corbett, supported by Julia Strong, is powerful because it is based on the principles of how children learn. It is powerful because it enables children to imitate the language they need for a particular topic orally before reading and analysing it and then writing their own version."
Talk for Writing runs throughout the school from EYFS up to Year 6. Each year group has specific quality texts from a variety of genres which they use as their focus texts each half term. These texts link to their topics across the curriculum meaning that learning is relevant and vocabulary is embedded.
Children build you their confidence to perform and develop a text they come to know very well. They learn and use new vocabulary both orally and in their written work. Children are encouraged and supported to innovate each text and children in KS2 will also move on to inventing their own versions of the texts.
The programme follows these three steps for each text:
- Imitation
- Innovation
- Invention
For more information about these stages and the impact this programme has in schools please follow the link to the Talk for Writing website below:
National Poetry Day - 4th October 2018
Check out our AMAZING Performance Poets in action!
Star Writer!
We have a termly Star Writer board where children from each year group have an opportunity to showcase their writing talents. They are then displayed on the link corridor for everybody to see. The children are presented with a Star Writer certificate and pencil during Oscar assembly. We are very proud of their writing abilities!
Star Writer Board.
Young Writers Competition
Some of our year 5 children entered the Young Writers Competition and were asked to use their writing skills to write a story. They created their own mini sagas about toys that come alive and the adventures they face. These children were successful in winning the competition and had their work published in a book. 
Click here to view our school Phonics page
Here you will find more information about the Read Write Inc Phonics programme we run in school.
