Subject Leaders: Mrs L Kennett and Mrs A Hixon
New Waterstones Children’s Laureate Cressida Cowell is full of exciting plans and wants EVERY child to read for fun and get something out of books. Here, she shares her Children’s Laureate Charter with you all…
Cressida Cowell is the number one bestselling author-illustrator of the How to Train Your Dragon and The Wizards of Once book series, and the author of the Emily Brown picture books, illustrated by Neal Layton. She has sold over 11 million books worldwide in 38 languages.
Long Term Plans for English
English
Our carefully designed English curriculum integrates the skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking. We have found that immersing the children in a range of creative activities before starting a unit of work means that they are fully prepared and excited about the journey ahead of them. Through drama, out of school visits, painting and video clips, children have the chance to share vocabulary, ideas and concepts which gives their writing fresh meanign and purpose. Lessons are taught to inspire children to read and write. High-quality texts form the basis of our English lessons and inspire children to write for a range of purposes. We focus on exposing the children to high-quality language and vocabulary. Through termly theme days, we enable the children to explore their passions and interests as well as encourage them to express their understanding in a variety of ways.
Here are some examples of the high quality texts we use:
Reading
INTENT
It is our intention to make every child a reader by the end of their primary education regardless of their background, needs or abilities. We work passionately and collaboratively, with parents as part of the journey, to promote a love of reading through a range of genres and books, where all pupils are able to read fluently, and with confidence, in any subject across the curriculum.
IMPLEMENTATION
This year we will continue to promote our reading initiatives. As a school, we follow the Accelerated Reader scheme. This means that the children have the opportunity to choose from a wide range of books matched to their ability. We encourage the children to read a variety of books to ensure that they get the breadth and depth required for becoming a well-rounded reader. Children are then able to complete an online quiz that assesses how well they have understood what they have read. We celebrate the children that have achieved 100% in their quizzes and become millionaire word readers. Classes compete termly for points to become the winning class in each year group and across the school – rewards and medals are up for grabs! Children have access to quiz at home and at school with parents involved in the process via Home Connect. There is time scheduled daily for children to enjoy a quiet time to read and enjoy the text they have selected from the library. IPADs and computers are readily available for quizzes during these sessions too!
This year we have introduced a new programme called Little Wandle to help support children who need a boost to fully embed their phonics knowledge and develop their reading skills.
We thrive on ensuring children develop a love and passion for reading. During the school week, children are provided with the opportunity to enjoy the recently refurbished school library near the front of the school. Throughout our curriculum, children encounter a diverse range of literature such as sharing high quality non-fiction texts, fiction texts and poems through daily guided reading sessions. Comprehension is a vital part of our approach to developing life long readers.
Class story time is another essential part of our school day where enthusiastic and animated reading aloud takes place from the class teachers.
See links below for recommended reading lists for children:
https://schoolreadinglist.co.uk/category/reading-lists-for-ks2-school-pupils/
https://www.lovereading4schools.co.uk/
Writing
English curriculum intent
Writing: We are passionate about motivating writers at Kennington Academy. We use a variety of stimuli to enthuse writers, including the use of quality picture books as a vehicle to inspire our writers. Children are given an exciting and purposeful stimulus, along with a clear purpose and audience for writing, which we hope promotes and encourages creativity. Children explore texts and generate and craft their ideas for writing through a process that immerses them in a genre and supports them as they progress from shared to independent writing. Skilful teacher feedback along with a celebration of writing is an integral part of our writing success.
Throughout the writing process, spelling, punctuation and grammar are implicit within the learning experiences as lesson starters, early morning learning, spelling lessons and through modelled writing and explicit teaching. We promote cursive handwriting and highly value, even treasure children’s work. We promote ‘pride in the work’ and children are celebrated for every aspect of English. We believe in using formative and summative assessment for learning in every aspect of English, to ensure we meet the needs of every learner and inspire them to achieve highly and enjoy English learning fully.
We are very proud of our writing success again this year and will continue to promote excellence in all aspects of writing. Well done Kennington pupils.
Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar
We will be using a variety of techniques to focus on raising standard in this aspect of English, using ‘Purple Mash to teach and test children in a variety of ways every week.
