English @ Bridgetown

Welcome to the 'English' page of our website. We hope that you will find it a valuable source of information about how English is taught at Bridgetown Primary School.

Please feel free to have a look at our Literacy Policy (attached below) and navigate around these pages to find further details about Literacy in Bridgetown.

Our intent when planning the English curriculum:

At Bridgetown Primary School, English and the teaching of English is the foundation of our curriculum. We intend on delivering a curriculum which:

• Ensures every single child becomes primary literate and progresses in the areas of reading, writing, speaking and listening.
• Is embedded within all our lessons using cross-curricular themes.
• Makes use of high-quality texts, immersing children in vocabulary rich learning environments and ensuring new curriculum expectations and the progression of skills are met.
• Exposes children to a wide range of reading material with varying genres.
• Allows children to develop a love of reading and be able to read for information, interest and enjoyment.
• Exposes children to a language heavy, creative and continuous English curriculum which will not only enable them to become primary literate but will also develop a love of reading, creative writing and purposeful speaking and listening.
• Uses ‘talk’ through Talk for Writing, to encourage children and to talk use talk around modelled texts to build an understanding of genre and provide them with the skills to talk about their grammar and writing choices
• Is fully inclusive to the differing groups of learners and needs of children in our school. 
• Is adapted to the particular needs of each child. 
• Allows pupils time to practise and develop a neat, legible, speedy handwriting style using continuous cursive letters that leads to producing letters and words automatically in independent writing.

How we implement the English curriculum:

With these aims in mind, we are providing children with a range of reading opportunities :

• discrete lessons for reading are incorporated into the morning session for all years from 1 to 6 in which reading skills are explicitly taught every day and that each group of children has time with their teacher in the reading session at least once a week. 
• All pupils are taught phonics in both Foundation Stage and Key Stage One, following the letters and sounds scheme. Phonics is also taught discretely daily.
• Vulnerable groups are highlighted and support staff are used to support these groups further to ensure progression and specific year group skills are secure. We use proven intervention programs, including Time to Talk, Project X, Rapid Readers and Fresh Start Readers to aid our support with these children.
• Resources to support and enhance these lessons were purchased so that all staff felt proficient and skilled in delivering these sessions effectively.
• These resources allow children time to not only develop their reading and comprehension skills, but also independence, a love of wider reading and exposure to rich vocabulary, which is absolute key in all sessions for all learners.
• Reading is not only celebrated in classrooms at Bridgetown, around school you will find displays which celebrate authors, children’s favourite books and reading reward schemes. 
• Throughout the school year the importance of reading is enhanced through World Book Day, author and poet visits, parent reading workshops and a range of trips and visits which enrich and complement children’s learning.
• Children are provided with home reading books which are catered to their personal level of reading.
• Teachers and support staff provide regular feedback and communications with parents through reading diaries, including the communication of children’s home reading.
• The school library has a selection of engaging books which children can borrow from school.

At Bridgetown we ensure that the teaching of writing is purposeful, robust and shows clear progression for all children:

• Talk for Writing is embedded at every phase of the teaching sequence which is structured to include teacher talk, supported pupil talk and independent pupil talk.
• Talk for writing allows children to explore the processes involved in being a writer, and extends oral rehearsal so that it becomes a draft for their written pieces.
• Cold and Hot tasks show clear progression for each new genre children are learning, with the use of formative assessment to identify which language features each group of children need to understand in order to effectively write for that purpose.

• We ensure that each year group is teaching the explicit grammar, punctuation and spelling objectives required for that age group. 
• As well as teaching the objectives, teachers are able to embed the skills throughout the year in cross-curricular writing opportunities
• All year groups use the same format for assessing writing which have been produced in line with the end of Key Stage assessment frameworks as published by the Department for Education.
• Further writing is taught through the use of a quality text, which exposes the children to inference, high-level vocabulary, a range of punctuation and characterisation.  Each text is purposefully selected in order to promote a love of reading, engagement and high quality writing from each child.
• Topic specific vocabulary and texts are instrumental in the planning and delivery of the whole school curriculum, ensuring that all children are able to access all areas of study, supporting the narrowing of the language gap.
• Spelling rules are explicitly taught in the classrooms as part of dictated sentences and through modelled and shared writing. There is an expectation that children will spend time at home learning their spellings.
• Discrete handwriting lessons are taught, allowing children to develop a continuous cursive style from Year 1 onwards. Teachers mark and write on working walls in a cursive style to provide models for our pupils.

The impact English teaching will have:

• Children have a love of reading and are able to read for information, interest and enjoyment.
• Children have had access to a range of top quality literature appropriate for their age, including literature from a range of cultures.
• Children can decode fluently and read with expression.
• Children write with confidence, fluency and understanding, orchestrating a range of independent strategies to self-monitor and correct.
• Children have an interest in words and their meanings, developing a rich vocabulary in spoken and written forms. All children are fully equipped with the vocabulary to access the whole curriculum.
• Children have experienced a range of text types and genres and are able to write in a variety of styles and forms appropriate to the situation.
• Children have powerful imaginations, inventiveness and critical awareness.
• Pupils will leave primary school being able to effectively apply spelling rules and patterns they have been taught
• Parents and carers will have a good understanding of how they can support reading, spelling, grammar and composition at home, and contribute regularly to homework

Pupils understand the importance of neat presentation and the need for different letterforms (cursive, printed or capital letters) to help communicate meaning clearly.

our English pages will be updated regularly with information about what is happening in English lessons throughout the school and provide you with resources that can help you support your child's learning at home.

  Talk 4 Writing in action at Bridgetown School....

Talk 4 writing is now in full swing here at Bridgetown. Here are some photos to show it in action! Please read the parent guide above for more information about the stages of the talk-4-writing process.