English
The English Curriculum
At OGPS we aim to:
Provide
an exciting, inspiring and engaging English curriculum. We want our children to communicate their
thoughts, ideas and opinions clearly and succinctly, as well as listening to
and reflecting on others ideas. We want our children to become life-long
readers and have a passion for writing for a range of purposes.
- To make every child fluent in reading and writing
- Inspire a love of reading
- To use English as a medium for children to share their
knowledge, skills and understanding
- Have a suitable technical vocabulary to articulate
their responses; debate and discuss different ideas and to form opinions
- Develop children’s experiences of reading and writing
across a range of genres
- Develop powers of imagination, inventiveness and
critical awareness
In order to achieve our vision, we put a
great emphasis on reading for pleasure, grammar and the development of good
handwriting and spelling. There is also an emphasis on developing life-long
skills such as discussing and debating; formal presentations; dictation and
reciting poetry.
All pupils in Key Stage 1 and 2 are taught according to the National Curriculum English Programmes of Study
The main aims of the National English
Curriculum are to:
"… promote high standards of literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the written and spoken word, and develop a love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment."
Speaking and Listening
The National Curriculum reflects the
importance of spoken language in pupils’ development across the whole
curriculum – cognitively, socially and linguistically. Spoken language
underpins the development of reading and writing. The quality and variety of
language that pupils hear and speak are vital for developing their vocabulary
and grammar and their understanding for reading and writing.
Therefore, we ensure children have
opportunities to explain their understanding of books and other reading, and to
prepare their ideas before they write. During the children’s journey at Oliver
Goldsmith, they have opportunities to improvise, devise and script drama for
one another and a range of audiences, as well as to rehearse, refine, share and
respond thoughtfully to drama and theatre performances. This is carried out
through English lessons (role-play, hot seating, performing and reciting poems,
talk partner activities, whole class discussions across the curriculum,
storytelling), assembly performances and whole school productions.
Reading
We strongly feel that strong writers are developed from strong readers. We aim to foster a love of reading as well as teach the skills of reading. Therefore, one of our main priorities for our faculty is to continue to drive standards in reading and comprehension skills. We do this in many different ways:
1. Daily phonics lessons in EYFS and KS1.
2. Whole class guided reading lessons. This is where groups of
children share a text and are listened to reading and have an opportunity to
show their understanding through oral or written tasks. They take place at least 4 times a week in Year 3 – Year 6. Children in EYFS, Year 1 and Year 2 have books matched to their reading ability and take place in smaller groups.
3.
Reading a book aloud for pleasure. A class book is read aloud at the
end of each day to promote a love of reading. The children will hear a range of
fiction, non-fiction and comics being read aloud.
5.
Class libraries. Each class has an
inviting class library with a range of books where children are given the
opportunity to select books and read for pleasure.
6. Celebrating reading. National events are celebrated such as National Poetry Day, World Book Day and promoting the Summer Reading Challenge.
- Weekly library visits. Children have the opportunity to select books from the school library and their class library to read for pleasure. Children are encouraged to read these books in their free time. The library is currently closed due to building works and will due to open in January 2024.
- Home-School Reading Record. This enables teachers and parents to work in partnership to encourage an enjoyment of reading, discussing and sharing books and to further consolidate important inference and deduction skills. We encourage all families to read together at least 3 x week and for parents to communicate this in their child's reading record.
- English Visitors and Visits. We have strong links with Wizard Theatre and take part in Book Weeks where authors/poets are invited to do performances/workshops. Year groups also invite authors in if they are studying a specific genre of text.
Please click on the links below for further information about our reading curriculum.
English - Reading Curriculum Information
English - Reading Book Journey
English Reading Progression Map
Phonics - Please go to our phonics page here for more information: Phonics
Writing
We believe that teaching children to understand the power of writing is an important part of our job as teachers. We equip the children with the correct writing skills ensuring they will be able to use them effectively within a literate world.
We provide our children with a stimulating writing environment provide encouragement and good quality modelling of writing. We have clear expectations of writing and communicate these targets to the children. We have high expectations of the finished writing product and encourage the children to maintain the same standards at all times.
We believe children write well if they are stimulated by the high quality texts and genres. Our English curriculum has been written to ensure that children have high quality models to draw on in their own writing, and that they learn to think as writers, working with audience, purpose and composition in mind.
The English writing curriculum at OGPS ensures that throughout a series of English lessons, the children will work through the seven components of writing: planning, drafting, sharing, evaluating, revising, editing, and publishing their writing over several weeks. We strive to ensure the children are confident with explaining the purpose, audience and type of writing when leading up to a piece of independent extended writing at the end of each half term.
Children are taught to write in a variety of styles in context such as persuasive, recounts, instructional, discursive, explanatory, reports as well as narrative (poetry and stories). Children learn how to vary sentences, make interesting and ambitious word choices, and use grammar and punctuation correctly. Each piece of written work is carefully supported through the use of a WALT (we are learning to) and a toolkit to guide the children.
Please click on the links below for further information about our writing curriculum.
English - Writing Curriculum Information
English - Writing Journey (all genres)
English Writing Progression Map
Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation (GPaS)
Our curriculum fully reflects the more rigorous emphasis on the teaching of spelling and grammar in primary schools. Children are taught explicit grammar and spelling skills in weekly lessons. Grammar skills are then practised during writing lessons, and spelling rules and conventions are taught before being learnt and practised for homework.