English

_{^{The English Curriculum at North Lakes School}}

The children follow the 2014 English program of study and are supported by a wide variety of resources, which are matched to their needs.

Our curriculum for English reflects the importance of reading, writing and speaking in pupils’ development across the whole curriculum. We intend to foster a love for the English language by offering our children a range of opportunities through reading, writing and experiential learning. We strive to immerse our children in a language rich environment that provides children with an abundance of vocabulary so they can share their thoughts, feelings and ideas, resulting in them becoming powerful communicators. We seek to provide hooks, high quality texts and resources that transport children into new and exciting worlds and aim for children to be authors and in turn inspire others.

In reading, teaching focuses on developing pupils’ competence in both word recognition and comprehension. A key priority this year is to develop pupils’ pace, fluency and accuracy in their own reading so that it improves their reading comprehension skills. For all year groups, whole class reading sessions take place in addition to an English lesson. Children are guided towards appropriate reading books and individual readers are listened to weekly in school. Children are also encouraged to read at home 5 times per week. North Lakes promotes reading for pleasure and engages with the community, developing different reading challenges including: visiting Penrith Library and book shops; encouraging reading mornings for parents in class; promoting World Book Day; and setting a variety of different reading challenges.

Although we are a junior school, some children may not not be phonetically secure, therefore, phonics skills are targeted though intervention groups using the DFE approved systematic synthetic phonics teaching scheme, Unlocking Letters and Sounds, which supports and enables children to continue to develop their fluency and confidence as a reader. A Lexia Core Reading program also runs alongside our teaching of phonics in upper KS2.

In Writing, we use a mastery approach that incorporates the National Curriculum objectives. Lessons are planned using F Steps (feedback, skills, talk and thought, engagement, practice and sequence), which aims to empower children to become competent writers. Children are given opportunities to consolidate prior learning; explore literature and big questions; be exposed to different contexts; develop their writing skills and apply these in their writing.

Subject Leader: Mrs L Brady
Updated: September 2023