English
Subject Leaders: Mr Cope and Miss Wilson
At Etchells we strive to deliver bespoke English teaching that continues to excite, engage and challenge. We aim to equip our pupils with the ability to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others, and through their reading and listening, they are able to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually.
Intent
Reading
Our reading provision strives to immerse our learners into a life-long love of reading for pleasure which aims to reflect their own identities, lived experiences and realities, as well as the voices of those belonging to different cultures, locations and times.
High quality texts, hand-picked by our learners and staff, are at the heart of our school community – fostering inclusivity, recognition of protected characteristics and modern British values- to allow our pupils to make sense of, interrogate and unlock the world around them, as well as laying the foundations for them to enrich their vocabulary.
Our learners embark upon a personal reading journey to develop their skills of decoding, fluency and comprehension of language to become confident and enthusiastic readers. Our bespoke phonics curriculum accompanies and supports them on this journey to nurture transferrable and life-long skills of reading- as well as the sheer magic and joy of losing yourself in a book!
Writing
Writing allows all children to find and use their voice – and affect the change they want to see in the world. Recognising this, we aim to deliver a bespoke teaching of writing, that continues to excite, provoke, engage and challenge. Nurturing the ability to write clearly and coherently for a range of purposes and audiences, we aim to equip our pupils with the ability to speak and write fluently and creatively - enabling them to communicate their ideas and emotions to others.
Our holistic approach towards teaching reading and writing, ultimately aims to allow all of our learners to see and use the power and magic of language.
Implementation
Our mastery approach towards teaching, places high-quality texts at the heart of the children’s learning, providing real examples of effective narrative techniques and rich vocabulary. Each unit of learning provides the opportunity to write for a particular purpose by developing, securing and independently applying a range of appropriate grammatical structures, text features and punctuation to suit each specific genre. Whilst developing a strong sense of audience, teachers use a range of drama processes to completely immerse pupils into fictional worlds - igniting curiosity, provoking enquiry and demanding critical thinking.
Our Purposes for Writing:
In KS1 focus on writing to entertain and inform.
In LKS2 focus on writing to entertain, inform and persuade.
In UKS2 focus on writing to entertain, inform, persuade and discuss.
This journey towards becoming an accurate and creative writer begins in EYFS, where children are encouraged to take pride in their writing and are taught how to write in a cursive handwriting style. Following this they begin to work towards being rewarded with their pen licence.
Phonics is taught in ability groups. We follow the principles of Letters and Sounds and use our bespoke Etchells' Phonics Curriculum to aid with resources. Our pupils at the very early stages of phonic development are encouraged to use the Jolly Phonic action to aid phoneme, grapheme recall. Phonic sessions are fun, pacey and hands on. A range of resources are used, such as games, white boards, large graphemes, and I Pads.
