Intent

At Abel Smith School, we are committed to providing a rich and inclusive English curriculum that equips our pupils with the necessary skills to become confident, competent, and articulate communicators. Our intent is to foster a love for language, literature, and writing, enabling our pupils to develop a deep understanding and appreciation of the English language.

Our curriculum is designed to inspire all learners, building upon their prior knowledge and experiences whilst providing opportunities for them to explore and engage with a wide range of texts, both fiction and non-fiction. We aim to develop their fluency, accuracy, and creativity in speaking, listening, reading, and writing, whilst instilling a passion for continual learning and personal growth. Crucially our English curriculum provides a clear pathway of progression of skills as the children move through the school.

Implementation

Our aims are embedded across our English lessons and the wider curriculum. We provide a well organised English curriculum that provides many purposeful opportunities for reading, writing, and discussion.  Cross-curricular links are embedded in planning to ensure the very best opportunities for discussion, the reading of high-quality text, and writing activities.

 At Abel Smith we teach: 

• Daily phonic lessons using Little Wandle Letters and Sounds in Early Years and Key Stage 1

• Daily spelling in Year 2 from the Spring Term and at least 3 times a week in Key Stage 2 (combined with Phonics intervention ) 

• Daily English lessons linked to a high-quality core text – adapted to meet the needs of the children 

• Letter formation phrases to develop early handwriting and to support joining in Year 2.

• Whole class reading sessions to teach vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval and sequencing/ summarising. Whole class reading is taught using our linked core texts and extracts from a wide range of high quality texts.

• Individual reading with staff and parent volunteers.

Furthermore, we connect English learning to other subjects enabling pupils to develop skills in research, critical thinking and expression across the curriculum. We embed digital literacy in our sequence of lessons and use technology to model high-quality writing to all pupils. 

Impact

Our children share a love of reading  - they are enthusiastic readers and writers who enjoy showcasing their developing literacy knowledge and skills through displays around the school and performing to a wider audience in assemblies. They are confident to take risks in their reading and writing and love to discuss and share their ideas. Our attainment at the end of Early Years, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 is above the national average and most children leave Abel Smith with secure Literacy skills to enable them to continue their learning and to be able to communicate effectively as they move on to Secondary school.

From feedback with our local Secondary settings, we know our pupils leave Abel Smith with firm foundations and are able to successfully build on these during the next steps of the education.