At Hope school, our aim is to give our pupils the skills and knowledge needed to be empowering, confident and ambitious life- long learners, English teaches pupils to speak and write fluently and be able to communicate their ideas and emotions to others. This is a vital skill for pupils to have to be able to become independent and successful members of society.

We want our pupils to have a love of language and literature and this comes from providing them with quality teaching and a range of texts to help them to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually.

Reading has a key role in Hope school, it is embedded through the whole curriculum as well as the school day, providing pupils with an amazing range of books to develop their imagination and creativity as well as develop their knowledge and learning and ensuring time is allocated throughout the timetable to allow pupils time to read individually, 1:1 and in whole class situations. This has allowed pupils to understand themselves more, and discover their qualities, strengths and interests and inline has created pupils who are excited to read in order to discover and learn new things and are enthusiastic to share what they have read and learnt with others. We support pupils with reading through Phonics and Comprehension lessons which take place every morning, this allows pupils to develop the skills needed to be confident readers and get the most out of the books they read. Pupils follow the Read, Write Inc programme for Phonics and then Brilliant Publications for comprehension, which helps pupils develop the skills to be competent readers such as fluency, use of language, summarising and text meaning.

We also ensure pupils are able to share all their ideas with others by supporting pupils with their spoken language skills. We do this by having a progressive spoken language tool as part of the English overview, this allows staff to see what pupils have learnt in previous years and build on this to allow pupils to make appropriate progress in this area. Spoken language is an important tool to be able to communicate and pupils with SEND can struggle with this aspect of English. At Hope we ensure we provide pupils with all they need to be able to listen and respond to others, participate in discussions, have a broad and wide vocabulary, ask relevant questions and speak audibly and fluently. We do this by ensuring pupils are exposed to situations that allow them to practise these skills such as role play, presentations, hot seating and debates. Oracy lessons happen across all areas of the curriculum and we promote speaking and listening in all lessons.

At Hope school pupils are eager to support each other, we have a selection of Writing Ambassadors from each year group who meet with Mrs Gorman, English Lead, once a half term. During this time pupils’ complete books looks, learning walks, celebration assemblies and gather pupil voice on what is going well and areas for improvements. This feedback is shared with class staff so they can implement pupil voice in to their planning and teaching. We also have Librarians, who ensure the library is clean and tidy, the books on offer are what pupils are interested in and link to topics across the school as well as reading to other pupils and supporting them in building a love of reading. The pupils take great pride in their roles and are eager to support staff in making positive changes across the school.

Intent

The root of everything we do at Hope stems from our high expectations and dedication to promote our pupils qualities, strengths and interests. We strive to empower the children, at our school, to truly believe and know: ‘If I tray, I can’. Alongside this, we understand that English is at the heart of everyday life and in order for our pupils to flourish and succeed, we need to provide an English curriculum that teaches them fundamental skills, preparing them to be life- long learners who are able to make a positive contribution to the wider community. At Hope, we are dedicated in providing an English curriculum that is built around high -quality text, that immerse pupils in to different times. Worlds and cultural and supports their imagination and understanding of the world.  

In addition to this, we aim to promote a love of writing by teaching fun, interactive and worthwhile lessons through a curriculum that covers essential criteria, ambitious vocabulary and builds on cumulative end goals. We want our pupils to enjoy putting pen to paper, communicating their ideas and emotions in a purposeful way.

Through the love of reading and class novels, we will encourage our children to write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style for a range of contexts, audiences and purposes. We strive to support our pupils with the skills they need to be confident writers, giving them the skills to use ambitious vocabulary with the awareness of the audience and encouraging them to use their imagination to create writing that jumps off the page and grabs the readers attention. The ability to write fluently, with interesting detail and word consciousness, is a powerful skill to obtain and the staff at Hope will do everything we can to provide our pupils with the essential tools.

Implementation

At Hope, writing is developed through a number of different and effective approaches. Writing is taught and developed in daily phonics/spelling sessions, in writing lessons and through the wider curriculum. We use the scheme ‘Read, Write, Inc.’ to develop phonics and spelling across the school. Within the phonics scheme, fundamental writing skills are taught and developed. These skills are revisited daily.

Handwriting lessons take place weekly, pupils are assessed and based lined when they start using letter families and the S factors for Success tool. Handwriting intervention is then put in place to support the stage of writing the pupil is at. This is then monitored by class staff and extra support is provided to pupils if needed.

In writing lessons, writing is implemented through a carefully crafted English sequence and is taught daily. The sequence allows our children to build on and revisit essential skills, whilst also immersing them into carefully selected high quality model texts with purposeful writing opportunities carefully planned for.  Model texts have been carefully chosen to create interest and to show the pupils what a good example looks like. Throughout the sequence, writing is clearly modelled by teaching staff and our pupils are given opportunities to write at length, developing their independence of planning, drafting and editing their own writing. The children will be taught about the features of different genres and non- fiction texts.  Our staff will teach the different stages of the sequence. These stages have been chosen in order to cover objectives from the National Curriculum and to assist in embedding our reading and writing milestones. The sequence ensures that there are opportunities to teach and revisit SPaG objectives and a final write will give the children the opportunity to ‘show off’ everything they have learnt.

Throughout the whole curriculum, we systematically teach our children vocabulary to foster a love of language and to develop word consciousness. Vocabulary is planned for each subject which is revisited throughout the year and built on progressively throughout the school. The children are provided with word mats, dictionaries, thesauruses and working walls which introduce the children to new and unfamiliar vocabulary. The vocabulary is incorporated and investigated in lessons developing the children’s word consciousness and are encouraged to use it in their own written work.  We want children to have the ability to write fluently and to use their new -found vocabulary and knowledge to write in purposeful ways.

Hope is a reading school that uses high-quality texts to push discovery and delight in learning new things. We develop a genuine love of reading so that our children read widely and often for information and pleasure. With a deeper love of reading comes a deeper love of writing – they both go hand in hand. Across a school year, we organise many whole school enrichments to celebrate events such as World Book Day, Roald Dahl, National Writing Day etc which promote reading and writing. Days like these are used as stimuli for the children’s writing.

Impact

Evidence of impact can be seen in our amazing children’s books, our displays and from a number of learning walks carried out across the year. Whilst carrying out moderation, subjects leads and the SLT have witnessed the English sequence being implemented and our pupils captivated in their learning. Writing stamina is developing across the school with support in place to continue to fully embed this and word consciousness is evolving. Fundamental skills have been revisited and taught with rigour. Hope is starting to have a writing culture with pupils who have a love of writing and sharing their ideas with staff, family and peers. We have writing celebration assemblies where pupils can show case their work as well as having work displayed across the school environment not just in classrooms. Pupils have growing confidence in their writing skills and are proud to share their work with others.