English

Welcome to our English page.

English Curriculum Intent

Early Reading and Phonics

Reading is the key that unlocks the whole curriculum so the ability to efficiently decode is essential.  At Castle Hill Primary School, we use the Read Write Inc. synthetic phonics programme to teach our children the core skills of segmenting and blending and to start them on their reading journey.

Read Write Inc. phonics is an inclusive programme for all children who are learning to read.  We

teach Read Write Inc. systematically and provide high quality learning experiences.  We want to enable our children to become confident, skilled and fluent readers and enable them to use reading to learn across the curriculum and enjoy reading for life.

Read Write Inc. is taught consistently from Nursery through to Year Two and sometimes beyond.

Developing Life-Long Readers

Reading forms the basis of our learning across the curriculum.  We want to expose our children to a range of high quality fiction and non-fiction texts, in order to develop their reading skills, enhance their knowledge of literature and support their learning across the curriculum.  We provide opportunities for our children to enjoy reading in a number of ways:

• Reading independently
• Reading with a family member at home or a staff member in school
• Enjoy listening to their teacher read stories in school
• Sharing texts as a class in English, and other subjects
• Sharing and discussing texts in Guided Reading sessions

Writing

The early ‘building blocks’ of writing are taught systematically and link directly to sounds being taught in Read Write Inc. lessons from EYFS to Year Two and beyond (to meet the individual needs of children as appropriate).

We want our children to become proficient writers.  By exposing them to, and taking inspiration from, a range of quality fiction and non-fiction texts (including poetry) across the curriculum, we strive to develop their authorial voice, grammatical skills and enrich and broaden their vocabularies. 

We believe writing should have purpose.  We teach units of work, across a range of genres, which build progressively to generating published written pieces the children can be proud of and share with their peers.