English Curriculum

Intent, Implementation and Impact

Intent

At St Paul’s Church of England School, we intend to promote a love of reading and the English language that is long lasting and effectively prepares our children for adulthood and the world beyond our school.

Staff aspire for all children to read fluently by the end of Key Stage One, in order for them to build their basic skills as they progress through Key Stage Two. Our chosen phonics scheme, Essential Letters and Sounds – which is government validated (www.essentiallettersandsounds.org), is taught daily in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 and gives children regular opportunities to access decodable texts that are matched to their growing phonics knowledge.

At St Paul’s, we have introduced the CLPE English curriculum, which places rich and diverse texts at the centre of our children’s learning: texts that act as a catalyst for purposeful and creative writing opportunities across a variety of genres. Teachers use the scaffolding provided by the CLPE to design creative and innovative units of work that allow children to read, gather content, plan, write and edit pieces of work that showcase skills that spiral upwards from entry.

Our daily English curriculum is supplemented with events throughout the year that celebrate reading, oracy and seek to enrich our children’s cultural capital and knowledge and understanding of the world in which they live.

Implementation

Teachers at St Paul’s are committed to designing inspiring and inclusive units of work that reflect the ever changing needs of our children.

We have introduced the CLPE curriculum to provide our teachers with the scaffolding to innovate, using a variety of texts as a starting point.

Our teaching sequences are broken up into four distinct parts: Immersion, Gathering content, planning and writing. Each part aims to build on the last, developing skills and ending in a published piece of writing that reflects national curriculum objectives.

In the immersion phase, children will be introduced to a text and will read, sequence, act out explore and analyse the different features that each genre contains. Our children will participate in drama, poetry recital and performance utilising a selection of CLPE teaching approaches.

Children gather content by practicing the key skills needed for success in their main piece of writing. This will often include shorter writing opportunities such as character and setting descriptions, couplets and rhyming words. A key priority of the school is to develop children’s vocabulary and standard English. Teachers explicitly teach key vocabulary throughout the immersion and gathering content phases.

Using the content that the children have brought together, they will enter the planning phase where children will be exposed to a number of different planning structures and formats. As they progress through their school journey, staff aspire for children to make planning choices independently, based on the genre and purpose of the text. During the planning phase, teachers will utilise a variety of teaching techniques such as shared writing and joint composition to model high quality writing outcomes.

Children then enter a phase of writing which includes drafting, re drafting and editing their work, responding to a combination of teacher and peer feedback. 

Work is then published and shared with their peers when it is displayed around our school and in their classrooms. The diagram below shows the sequence overview that teachers use.

Teachers use the national curriculum to ascertain what content children will learn to utilise. As children progress through the school, teachers build on the skills that have been previously taught (spiral) in order to deepen the children’s understanding.

Impact

Children produce high quality pieces of work at the end of each teaching sequence and teachers clearly show what work has been completed independently. They use a range of assessment for learning techniques to ascertain children’s understanding. Children will show their understanding in a variety ways including written work, debate, performance and pupil voice. Teachers listen to children read on a regular basis and promote a love of reading by sharing a class text daily. Teachers encourage children to discuss their reading with enthusiasm in order to create and scholarly and studious approach that makes the world accessible to all.