English
At Peatmoor Community Primary School, we value reading and writing as important life skills, and we consider that an exciting, innovative English curriculum which enables and empowers children's written and oral communication is key. We believe these fundamental skills are essential to academic success and so through speaking and listening, reading and writing, and a rich vocabulary, children learn to express themselves creatively and imaginatively, and communicate with others effectively.
We believe our curriculum should enable all pupils:
- To write with confidence and accuracy for a variety of purposes and audiences whilst developing their own individual flair.
- To be able to write with grammatical accuracy and apply spelling patterns correctly.
- To become avid readers; children who read widely and who are able to express preferences and opinions about the texts that they read.
- To have access to a wide range of text types, genres and authors and for them to make informed opinions about their favourites and become confident, thoughtful and enthusiastic readers who read for pleasure.
- To develop their ability to communicate orally for a range of purposes including a broad and rich vocabulary.
- To be exposed to a wide range of vocabulary so that they are able to decipher new words, then use them in their writing and when speaking both informally and formally.
- To apply all of these English skills to other areas of the curriculum.
Reading
At Peatmoor we develop and support our children’s love of reading by offering a wide range of reading opportunities to ensure that pupils are taught to read with fluency, accuracy, understanding and enjoyment, building on what they already know. We believe in developing a reading culture throughout the school by creating welcoming book areas and by providing a library which hosts a wide variety of books for the children to choose from. We also recognise that reading is a core tool for life, and we aim to foster a love for reading in all of our pupils through whole class reading, reading for pleasure and by using language rich, quality texts.
Writing
At Peatmoor we offer a wide range of writing opportunities to ensure that children understand the value of writing, encounter a variety of writing stimuli and are encouraged to write for different purposes and audiences including real life purposes.
We aim to develop children’s ability to produce well structured, detailed writing in which the meaning is made clear, and which engages the interest of the reader. Attention is paid throughout the school to the formal structures of English, grammatical detail, punctuation and spelling. Teachers model writing strategies and the use of phonics and spelling strategies in shared writing sessions. Guided writing sessions are used to target specific needs of both groups and individuals, whilst children have opportunities to write at length in extended, independent writing sessions for a range of purposes across the curriculum.
through guided writing sessions. Our reading curriculum inspires much of our writing by the use of age-appropriate high-quality texts linked to the text type that is being taught.
We believe that all children should have opportunities to:
- Be immersed within a quality text.
- Be exposed to high quality texts including imaginative vocabulary.
- Write from a range of genres across fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
- Write creatively drawing on their own ideas, interests and experiences.
- Write for a range of purposes.
Use writing to demonstrate their learning through cross-curricular writing.
By the time children leave Peatmoor, we want them to be effective communicators with a love of reading and books. For the children to be confident in explaining the meaning of vocabulary and being able to write for different purposes; children who are prepared to take risks. We believe that these skills equip our children to continue to make excellent progress on their journey through secondary school and beyond!