English

English

At St John's Primary School, our English curriculum meets the requirements of the national curriculum and is designed to meet the needs of all children at our school.

We deliver an inspiring, engaging English curriculum through high-quality texts. Developing a love of reading and literature for all children is a priority. English is planned to build on knowledge and skills continuously and structured to ensure progression throughout each year group. As part of the English curriculum, children develop their speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills.

English is taught explicitly through daily lessons and is built upon throughout the wider curriculum.

In Reception and key stage 1, phonics is taught in discreet 20-minute sessions using Reading Planet Rocket Phonics, a DfE validated systematic, synthetic phonics programme aligned to Letters and Sounds 2007. Our mission is to help every child to keep up and not catch-up.

In addition, to English lessons in key stage 2, a 20-minute Reading for Mastery session focuses on teaching the key reading skills linked to the reading content domain areas: summary and prediction, vocabulary, retrieval, inference, compare, contrast and comment. This approach also provides daily whole class practice to develop reading fluency.

Our writing curriculum is designed to provide a broad and balanced education that meets the needs of all children. We follow the award-winning Ready Steady Write from Literacy Counts to develop confident, independent and successful writers with high aspirations. Our writing curriculum is research-informed and impact-proven, carefully designed to support all children to master the foundational skills and write for a clear audience and purpose. Through the use of high-quality, vocabulary-rich texts, we provide exciting and meaningful reasons to write. Children are immersed in literature and taught to craft their writing with precision, using a range of pedagogical approaches, including sentence accuracy, modelled writing and shared writing, as well as regular opportunities for editing. We value spoken language as a foundation for writing. Through structured talk, drama and vocabulary exploration, children learn how to organise and express their ideas clearly before writing them down. Our aim is for every child – regardless of need – to write fluently and take pride in their work. We want our pupils to leave primary school as enthusiastic writers, ready for the next stage of their education.

English Whole School Curriculum Map