Intent

Our school curriculum is designed to enable our children to become respectful and successful adults in terms of being able to find employment in the future, to maintain healthy lifestyles and to be moral citizens. It is also designed to provide a relevant, progressive and well-structured academic curriculum which enables children to develop and master a broad knowledge and wide range of skills. Literacy is a key driver of our curriculum, allowing children to unlock the power of language both spoken and written

• Our aim is to ensure that every child becomes a reader, a writer and confident speaker by the time they leave Sparken Hill Academy.
• To promote and instil a love for reading, writing and high-quality literature into pupils at all ages.
• To derive an English curriculum, which develops the acquisition of knowledge and skills in line with the National Curriculum expectations.

Implementation

Our English curriculum is derived around high-quality age-appropriate stimuli. This could include; texts, videos, images or music.  We use these to generate ‘buzz and excitement’ in lessons, creating opportunities to develop reading fluency and comprehension with a focus on key reading strategies and skills. We aim to develop grammar and punctuation knowledge, and understanding so children can use and apply a greater range of skills across the wider curriculum; explore the writing structure and features of different genres and identify the purpose and audience. Children plan and write an initial piece of writing with a clear context and purpose before evaluating the effectiveness of writing by editing and redrafting.

Impact

We strive to ensure that our children’s attainment is in line, or exceeds, their potential when we consider the varied starting points of all our children. We measure this using a range of materials, whilst always considering the age-related expectations for each year group. Children will make at least good progress in Reading, Writing and Speaking and Listening from their last point of statutory assessment, or from their starting point in Nursery. We intend the impact of our English curriculum will ensure our pupils are academically prepared for life beyond primary school and throughout their educational journey.

English

English has a prominent place in education and in society. A high-quality education in English will teach pupils to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them. Through reading, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development. Reading also enables pupils both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know. All the skills of language are essential to participating fully as a member of society; pupils, therefore, who do not learn to speak, read and write fluently and confidently are effectively disenfranchised.

Writing

As stated in the National Curriculum 2014; the writing process, that the children will be taught is;

• plan
• draft
• evaluate/ edit
• proof-read
• present

We aim to develop children’s ability to produce well-structured, detailed writing in which the meaning is made. To engross children in the writing process, children are given opportunities to write for a range of purposes; they are encouraged to think about and engage the intended reader.  Particular attention is paid throughout the school to the formal structures of English; grammatical detail, punctuation and spelling.

Spelling

The teaching of Grammar and Spelling is in line with the requirements of The National Curriculum (2014). To be able to spell correctly is an essential life skill. When spelling becomes automatic, pupils can concentrate on the content of their writing and the making of meaning. Whilst we note that spelling is not the most important aspect of writing, confidence in spelling can have a profound effect on the writer’s self-image. We aim to use explicit, interactive teaching, which draws children’s attention to the origins, structure and meaning of words and their parts, the shape and sound of words, the letter patterns within them and the various ways they can learn these patterns.

In Foundation and KS1, daily phonics is the key to the children’s learning of spelling. From Year 2 and into KS2 the children move towards using their phonic knowledge to help them to understand spelling rules and patterns. We teach children to use their growing understanding of the morphology (word structure) and orthography (spelling structure) of words to support their spelling. Helping the children to understand how to use and apply known spelling patterns (and to develop strategies to tackle tricky words) is the key to helping them to become successful spellers. Spelling skills are taught daily in both KS1 and KS2.

Handwriting

On entry, our Foundation Stage children are involved in varied activities to develop essential prewriting skills in line with the Early Learning Goals; there is much focus on developing gross and fine motor skills and strengthening muscles in the arms and fingers. We use ‘Dough Disco’ and many playdough activities to increase muscle strength. Children are also introduced to the individual letters and rigorously taught correct formation, from the very beginning of their time in school. From the time that children are ready, they are taught to sit with a good posture and are taught to hold a pencil with the correct grip.

At Sparken Hill Academy, we teach handwriting three times a week from Year 1 to Year 6. Pupils who are still progressing through our Bug Club Phonics program, learn to write in print. Pupils who have completed this program, then begin to learn cursive handwriting.