English

EGA's English Intent

We want every child to have every opportunity to experience success in each English learning episode.

All children are given the opportunity to study English to develop their abilities to listen, speak, read and write for a wide range of purposes, so using language to learn and communicate ideas, views and feelings.

Children access an engaging, exciting and innovative English curriculum which enables and empowers their written and oral communication and creativity. Children are presented with opportunity to become articulate writers and speakers, through the use of purposeful language and vocabulary.

By developing every child’s ability to reflect on their own and others’ contributions and the language used, it allows them a greater understanding of the world around them, equipping them with the skills to become lifelong learners.

EGA's English Aims

Our aims of teaching English at Eldon Grove Academy are:

to enable children to read and write with confidence, fluency and understanding, using a range of independent strategies to self-monitor and correct.
to develop children’s love of reading;
to grow confident, independent readers through an appropriate focus on word-reading and comprehension skills;
to encourage children to become eager and reflective readers through exposure to a wide range of engaging and challenging texts;
to help children enjoy writing and recognise its value
to enable children to write with accuracy and meaning in narrative and non-fiction, understanding audience;
to increase children’s capacity to use planning, drafting and editing to improve their work;
to embed English skills so that children can use them in other curriculum areas;
to enable children to speak clearly and audibly in ways which take account of their listeners;
to encourage children to listen with concentration in order to be able to identify and summarise the main points of what they have heard;
to enable children to adapt their speech and language to a wide range of circumstances and demands;
to develop children’s abilities to reflect on their own and others’ contributions and the language used, in multiple contexts;
to increase children’s confidence when evaluating their own and others’ contributions through a range of drama activities.

Reading at EGA

Reading lessons take place every day, as part of the English curriculum.

In Year 1, we have an approach to reading that compliments our Phonics programme whilst stretching and developing pupil understanding and skill. This is devised into five ‘reading sessions’ per week, with a clear structure to embed.

Day 1 – Building background knowledge: framing the text to activate prior knowledge, remove potential barriers and explain key vocabulary choices
Day 2 – Developing fluency: choral and echo reading techniques
Day 3 – Text searching: exploring and interrogating a text with a specific focus and emphasis
Day 4 – Questioning: developing understanding from questionning, focusing on vocabulary and ideas
Day 5 – Comprehension: answering a range of question styles to showcase understanding

In Year 2, all children will engage in a phonics-to-fluency programme, three times per week, concentrating on repeated reading to expand the repertoire of words that the children can effortlessly recognise. The objective is to promote reading whole words, reducing reliance on decoding and consequently enhancing working memory for better text comprehension. These sessions will expose children to a variety of non-fiction texts that link to the Year 2 curriculum, supporting children in knowing and remembering more by boosting their background knowledge.

In Key Stage 2, all children access five reading sessions per week. These sessions are separate to, but may complement, literacy sessions. In Years 2 and 3, these sessions are centred around Reading VIPERS, where one or more strand of reading is a targeted focus for that session. In Years 5 and 6, where children showcase a greater understanding of each reading strand, opportunity for P.E.E (Point, Evidence, Explain) responses are built in to their questioning and activity.

Our developed book list enables children to enter many worlds, giving them the freedom to express themselves as they become enthusiastic and critical readers of stories, poetry and drama as well as non-fiction, media texts and visual stimuli. They are designed and built to support children on the journey from reading to writing. We are committed to providing class novel time, home reading, writing sessions and reading sessions on a daily basis. We enhance and engage learning through author and illustrator visits, parent workshops and visiting book fairs.

Reading for Pleasure

At EGA, Early Reading follows the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds programme and children take age and stage appropriate books home daily.

Once children enter Year 2, and phonics knowledge is embedded, children will receive a reading book from the ‘Orange’ book band, taken from the Collins Big Cat reading scheme. All children from Years 2 to 6 will receive a stage-appropriate reading book. This is the book children will read to adults in school and at home, as referenced in their reading journals.

Additionally, children can choose a ‘Reading for Pleasure’ book from our library. This can be a book taken from the fiction or non-fiction library and will be chosen based on the children’s interests e.g. Historical Fiction, Graphic Novels or Comics.

Writing at EGA

Writing lessons take place each morning. Our writing curriculum is based around our class novel, which is, where possible, linked to our class topic to enable cross-curricular learning. The writing curriculum enables children to access a progressive range of different text types.

Our English writing cycle includes the following, which staff can manipulate the order of to best suit the provision and need in their classroom:

Reading the new text, developing oracy through experiences, drama and discussion;
Exposure of the text type, analysing features, identifying perspective audiences and understanding purpose;
Teaching new vocabulary, including the use of technical vocabulary to increase the authenticity of the writing;
Developing sentence structure, including the use of punctuation, to have greater effect on the reader;
Explore teacher examples, showcasing high expectations linked heavily to taught PaG content;
Generate examples together as a class, editing and improving orally as part of peer discussion;
Plan the text, considering coherence;
Writing the text, considering layout and organisational features;
Editing and improving the text;
Sharing the text.

Cross Curricular Opportunities for Writing

Teachers will seek to take advantage of opportunities to make cross curricular links. They will plan for pupils to practice and apply the skills, knowledge and understanding acquired through English lessons to other areas of the curriculum.

Spelling at EGA

Spelling sessions take place at least four times per week during our teaching of English. Each lesson is designated to a specific area of spelling. The structure of the spelling sessions are as follows:

Lesson 1: Introducing the rule/pattern for the coming week. This first session has no cognitive overload. The rule/pattern is introduced through a stimulus (picture, artefact, guess the rule, same/different etc). Children are not to write the rule, but instead a sticker of the rule will be stuck into their spelling book. Within this session, children should use their prior knowledge of words to identify the rule, with planned links to other topics/units around the curriculum. Each week, the spelling rule will be sent to parents on Class Dojo and be a part of that week’s homework offer.

Lesson 2: This session is designed to investigate and explore the words and rule/pattern/convention). Here, children will be identifying if the rule involves prefixes, suffixes, silent letters/sounds, homophones, plurals etc. Furthermore, children will be exploring the morphology of the words, the etymology of the words, creating pseudo words, creating “silly sentences”, looking at how the spelling changes the meaning of the word/sentences (especially in homophones) and looking at alternative sounds/pronunciation.

Lesson 3: Tackling the tricky part: This session takes out the cognitive overload for children. Within each word/rule/pattern/convention, the children are identifying the ‘tricky’ part of the spelling. Teachers are to consider how to ‘hang the knowledge on to the child’ through the use of images, acronyms, analogies, songs etc. In KS2, these can be incorporated into the use of handwriting to achieve that muscle memory when handwriting the ‘tricky’ parts. Closed procedure activities are encouraged at this stage e.g. “Feb___ary”.

Lesson 4: The final spelling session of the week focuses on the application of the rule/pattern. Through differentiated activities, children could fill in the blanks for sentence (with or without a word mat), write a paragraph incorporating the word(s) and looking at the ‘bigger picture’ – these words added to the English working wall to ensure application across the curriculum. These spellings should then form part of any self/peer assessment in writing and would make up a large part of teacher spelling feedback for that week.

Eldon Grove Spelling Document 2023-24

Punctuation and Grammar at EGA

Punctuation and Grammar is built into the daily teaching of English. During this session, teachers plan activities to develop children’s knowledge and understanding of specific terminology, its purpose and application within written English. Strong examples are shown – when possible – from places within the class text. Targeted areas of Punctuation and Grammar, along with sentence and vocabulary-level lessons are taught within the Writing Cycle. In addition, there is a separate sentence-level lesson in the Writing Cycle. This is carefully planned so that the focus fits with the text type being taught and therefore, the children have ample opportunity to apply relevant skills to written work. Taught elements of Punctuation and Grammar are added to the English Working Wall, to ensure high expectations and exposure.