The English National Curriculum (2014) states:

‘The overarching aim for English in the National Curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment.’

The National Curriculum aims to ensure that all pupils:

• Read easily, fluently and with good understanding
• Develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
• Acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
• Appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
• Write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
• Use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas
• Are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate

Our English Curriculum has been carefully planned to ensure progress for each year group. Powick staff have worked collaboratively to develop a Literacy Spine which meets the aims of the National Curriculum and addresses the needs of the children in our school.  

In all classes, we place a high emphasis on the accurate application of basic skills and promote high standards in all of our children’s reading, writing, and speaking and listening opportunities. We understand how the development of excellent reading, writing, and speaking and listening skills will enable our children to fully access our broad and balanced wider curriculum, and that this will also impact on their future learning through secondary education and beyond.

We link topics in our wider curriculum to high quality and inspiring texts. These allow our children to explore the context of their topic but, most importantly, provide our children with rich vocabulary and excellent models of effective writing.

As a staff team, we have developed approaches to reading and writing which detail how each is taught throughout the school.

At Powick, phonics is taught through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised Scheme.

Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised is a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme developed for schools. It is based on the original Letters and Sounds but extensively revised to provide a complete teaching programme meeting all the expectations of the National Curriculum.

Consistency is key to the teaching of phonics and the same resources, routines and teaching sequence are applied to all stages of phonics learning. Children have progressive daily phonics sessions where gaps in learning are identified quickly and catch up sessions put in place to support all children to progress in their learning.