ENGLISH

English at Primary phase

It is our intention when teaching the English curriculum that our students acquire the necessary knowledge, skills and understanding to become lifelong learners and linguists. We strive to ensure that all our students receive a well-rounded learning experience when reading, writing or speaking and listening. This will equip them with the fundamental tools to be a successful learner here at primary school and beyond.

English is a core subject of the National Curriculum and a prerequisite for educational and social progress as it underpins the work undertaken in all areas of the curriculum. The acquisition of communication and language skills is of the utmost importance to us and therefore the pedagogy and practice of all aspects of English are given a high priority within school. Confidence in basic language skills enables children to communicate creatively and imaginatively, which is why we have chosen to use ‘Talk for Writing’ to teach our English curriculum with a greater emphasis on oracy, preparing students for their future.

English Curriculum Intentions:

• Our aim is to ensure that every child becomes a reader, a writer and a confident speaker by the time they leave us.
• To promote and instil a love for reading, writing and high-quality literature for all students from an early age.
• To provide a creative English curriculum that is well-sequenced to develop the acquisition of knowledge and skills over the course of every individual’s education.

Below you will find information about how English is taught at Grove Academy, including: Reading, Writing, Spelling and Handwriting 

Writing

A Grove Academy writer will be confident in communicating their ideas and thoughts, drawing on their broad knowledge and quality experiences. They are encouraged to take pride in their writing, develop the ability to write and speak clearly and to select vocabulary to suit a range of audiences and purposes.

How is writing taught?

We use a Talk for Writing approach from Reception to Year 6. This enables children to become fluent, confident writers by exploring high-quality texts with a focus on language and structure before writing their own version. Students learn to write for a range of purposes and develop knowledge of a breadth of text types. The writing curriculum is closely linked with other areas of the curriculum which enables them to write effectively for a range of audiences by drawing on their knowledge and vocabulary of a topic. Students’ knowledge of grammar is strengthened through both discrete teaching and by being embedded in all areas of the English curriculum.

How is writing assessed?

Invent tasks are used from Year 1 as a way for students to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding. These are written at the end of the final phase of a unit; students have the opportunity to draft, edit and publish a piece of writing which they feel proud of. These are then used by teachers to assess against the National Curriculum.

How can I support my child?

• Creative writing (writing short stories)
• Using opportunities to write about shared experiences (diary or letter writing)
• Writing shopping lists, cards, emails etc.
• Practising writing their name
• Opportunities for imaginative play both independently and with peers.
• Develop speaking and listening skills through regular quality discussions.

Oracy

Students are supported and encouraged to speak clearly, confidently and with expression to communicate their ideas and feelings. They are taught that, to become effective listeners, they need to be attentive and concentrate. Within lessons, discussions take place to extract key language and develop an understanding of how language is used in both written and spoken English.

Spelling

Learning how to spell is a useful lifelong skill. Correct spelling makes a child's work easier to read and understand, and children themselves take pride in being able to spell words accurately. If children are confident in their ability to spell, they are more likely to use more ambitious vocabulary in their writing rather than avoiding less familiar words simply because they are unable to spell them.

How is spelling taught?

We use the Spelling Shed programme to teach spelling from Years 2-6. This is an interactive and engaging programme which teaches children the rules and patterns of spelling; there is also a focus on irregular spelling patterns which need to be memorised. Students are taught spelling in a 3 weekly sessions of approximately 20 minutes.

How is spelling assessed?

Memorising spelling for a weekly spelling test can be stressful, and often children are unable to apply accurate spelling of these words to their writing. Because spelling is taught and rehearsed as part of the weekly teaching, children will not be given lists of spellings to learn for a test. Instead, children will have a list of personalised spellings for them to practise each week via our online games at: play.edshed.com. Their ability to spell these words accurately will be checked during a weekly review session. Any spellings that the student is not yet confident in will be carried over to the next week; when a student is confident with the spelling of a word, that word will be replaced by a new word on their spelling list. 

Assessment throughout a unit will be ongoing and children will be logging spellings that they find difficult. More formal assessment of spelling will take place every 6 weeks.

How can I support my child?

Parents can help support their children by regularly practising the words in their child's spelling list. This can be done via our online games which can be accessed via: play.edshed.com. Students will also have their words written on a Spelling Log sheet in their Home Learning Diary to reference and practice at home.

Some useful strategies include:

• Ask your child whether the word follows a rule, or if it is one of those tricky words which doesn't fit the rules.
  If it is a tricky word, ask them if they have thought of a good way of remembering it. Can they point to the letters that are the tricky ones? Can they use a rhyme or mnemonic to help them? Is there a funny way to say the word that helps them remember it?
• Ask them if the word has a prefix or a suffix. Can they find the root word? Can they explain the rules for adding the prefix or suffix?
• Check that your child knows what the word means. Ask them to use it in a sentence? This might be spoken rather than written at first, to check that they understand.

Handwriting

Our Handwriting Policy outlines how we teach handwriting at school.

We use a handwriting program called Letter-join to help the children with their cursive writing.

Any of our students wishing to practise their handwriting at home can now log in to the Letter-join website on iPads and tablets as well as desktop and laptop computers. There you will find the same, easy-to-use handwriting resources as we use at school.

DESKTOP AND LAPTOP LOG-IN

Simply go to www.letterjoin.co.uk and log in using the desktop log-in boxes. Log-in details will be supplied to you by class teachers and stuck into students’ home learning diary.

Letter-join will work on the following browsers on PCs:

• Google Chrome
• Firefox
• Safari
• Opera

The developers do not recommend using Internet Explorer for Letter-join.

IPAD AND TABLET LOG-IN

Go to www.letter-join.co.uk and select the Tablet Login button. Log in using details that will be supplied to you by class teachers and stuck into students’ home learning diary.

Letter-join will run on the following tablets:

• iPads running at least iOS7 through the Safari browser,
• Windows 8 tablets (8 inch and bigger) using the built-in browser,
• Android tablets (8 inch and bigger) using Google Chrome, Firefox or Opera 
   

Once logged-in, you will be able to watch how to form all the letters of the alphabet using the same style that we use at school. You can then trace over the letters and words on your tablet and print out the worksheets from your PC for real handwriting practice.

We are limited to the number of users who can log in to this account, so please only log in with this username and password/swipe code for your own personal use.

KS3

Students study a range of exciting topics in KS3 with an equal focus on Reading and Writing skills where they are encouraged to develop ideas, argue their point of view and explore the ideas and contextual factors behind given texts.  Pupils will be encouraged to read, act and create their own pieces of writing around a variety of topics and ideas.

KS4

At KS4 level, students revisit and further develop the skills they learnt at KS3 with encouragement and guidance to explore and analyse given texts in more depth.  Pupils are taught how to approach a range of topics, skills and questions in preparation for their GCSE exams in English and they learn the Language and Literature units simultaneously to ensure that all skills are being continuously revised and improved whilst covering new topics and texts.