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Millom Infant School
Every child a learner, we all learn together
English/Literacy
Our Vision
At Millom Infant School, English and the teaching of English is the foundation of our curriculum. The overarching aim of English in the national curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word and to develop a love of literature through widespread reading for pleasure.
English equips pupils with a uniquely powerful set of tools to understand and engage with the world. These tools include the ability and confidence to communicate clearly and effectively using both spoken, and written words, to listen with understanding and to be responsive, knowledgeable readers. English is integral to all aspects of life and, with this in mind, we endeavour to ensure that children develop a positive and enthusiastic attitude towards all areas of English that will remain with them in order to achieve their full potential in life and make a valuable contribution to society.
Our Aims
By the end of KS1, we aim for our pupils to:
- Read with confidence, fluency and understanding.
- Write clearly, accurately and coherently.
- Understand how grammar and punctuation is used and applying this knowledge when reading and writing.
- Present their written work in a clear, organised way, appropriate to the genre.
- Take pride in the presentation of their writing, including developing a neat, legible and fluent handwriting style.
- Have a suitable, age appropriate technical vocabulary to articulate their responses.
- Be able to listen attentively with understanding and be able to express their views clearly in a range of situations.
- Develop their powers of imagination and inventiveness.
- Practise, consolidate and develop English skills across the curriculum.
Our Curriculum
Reading and writing are closely linked and taught through a selection of rich, core texts.
Reading
At the heart of our curriculum, we aim to foster a deep love of reading and a passion to explore a wide range of vocabulary and stories. Through enjoying literature, our children develop efficient skills, which equip them for the next stage of their lives.
Reading in Key Stage One
All classes take part in daily reading activities through their phonics session. All children are involved in whole class reading to ensure that everyone in the class has exposure to age appropriate texts, including contemporary picture books, contemporary novels, heritage texts, seminal authors/poets, modern and classic poetry and non-narrative texts covering a wide range of topical themes. Teachers carefully choose a variety of medium to teach reading, including newspaper articles, video clips, extracts from novels etc., covering a breadth of topics. The texts are carefully selected to ensure children will be appropriately challenged with the level of vocabulary and to ensure that they are relevant to topics, current world events and the interests of the children. Teaching and learning is centred on developing the core skills of retrieval, vocabulary, inference, prediction, sequence and summary.
Children are encouraged to choose reading books from their classroom library to read independently for pleasure at a level appropriate to their reading ability and to further develop their knowledge of different authors. Once children become confident and fluent readers, they are able to have free choice from the classroom library and are encouraged to read a wide range of books by different authors.
Writing
Through a foundation of reading, children develop into competent, skilful writers who can write for a variety of purposes and audiences, sparking interest and engaging the reader. Writing is taught discreetly in daily English lessons but many opportunities to put these skills into practice are provided across the curriculum. For example, children may write a diary entry from the point of view of a Biblical character in an R.E. lesson, a non-chronological report about a country in a geography lesson, an explanation text in science, an instruction text in Design and Technology, a newspaper report about an historic event in history, etc. Opportunities are also provided to develop digital literacy skills with the use of iPads, including access to the internet.
Composition
Composition refers to writing for a specific purpose and audience. From KS1, children are taught to master the writing style of differing text types – beginning with Narrative and Instructional writing.
Cross-curricular writing opportunities provide an engaging and purposeful stimulus for children. They are encouraged to develop resilience throughout the writing process. Within a writing sequence, the children learn to embed language and form. They learn about the structure and organisation of a variety of text types. Extended opportunities for discussion of writing, e.g. role play, pair talk and drama are used to prepare children for the writing process. Shared writing provides an opportunity for the teacher to demonstrate and model writing including the thought processes that are required.