Intent

• We inspire children to develop a love of reading and teach them the necessary skills to read and share books that ignite their imagination and widen their knowledge of the world.
• We provide opportunities to read books from our rich and varied literary heritage and we establish the habit of reading widely and often.
• We recognise the importance of nurturing a culture where children take pride in their writing, can write clearly and accurately and adapt their language and style for a range of contexts.
• We nurture so that our children are confident in the art of speaking and listening and use discussion to communicate and further their learning. 
• We develop secure Literacy skills to enable children to become lifelong learners and to be able to communicate effectively in society.
• 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 Year 1

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

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

• Letter formation phrases to develop early handwriting and a handwriting scheme to support the move to 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 core texts and extracts from a wide range of high quality texts

• Individual reading with the class teacher on a weekly basis 

In addition to daily English lessons, from Early Years through to Year 6, our children use our reading scheme to develop a range of reading skills, as well as a love of reading. Children in Early Years and Key Stage 1 learn to read using fully decodable books linked to our phonics scheme. 

We use a wide variety of quality texts and resources in our teaching, to motivate and inspire our children. We provide a wealth of enrichment opportunities, from World Book Day Celebrations each year, to running a poetry day, welcoming authors in school, drama workshops that bring books to life, visits to the theatre and local library, book clubs, as well as creative writing competitions. We are passionate about children being immersed in creative literature and experiencing positive role models from a wide variety of sources.

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.