Click on the sections below to explore and learn more about the English curriculum at St Michael’s.
English Curriculum at St. Michael’s
Oracy
At St Michael’s, speaking and listening is developed from EYFS to year 6. We nurture children’s Oracy skills through a variety of approaches. We develop these skills so that our children are capable of expressing their own ideas clearly and confidently, in a safe and supportive environment. The children are encouraged to explore ideas through talk; challenge each other’s opinions and develop their own reasoned arguments, as well as talking in full sentences with a clear and confident voice. We ensure the children have the opportunity to learn to talk and learn through talk.
Reading
Children at St Michael’s will learn to read fluently and demonstrate a good understanding and comprehension. Our children will engage with a range of genres and develop their understanding of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Our curriculum has been designed to ensure that children have opportunities to develop a love of reading. We want our children to gain a thirst for reading a range of genres and participating in discussions about the books. Our curriculum has also been designed to ensure that our children not only read for pleasure, having had access to a wide range of text types, genres and authors, but to use books to research and gather new knowledge to extend their understanding.
When children leave Our Lady and St Paul’s, By the time they leave St Michael’s we aim for all children to be avid readers, children who read fluently and widely and are able to express preferences and opinions about the texts that they read.
We use the Junior Learning Letters and Sounds Phonics scheme to teach phonics across EYFS and KS1.
Writing
Our curriculum has been designed to ensure that our children enjoy writing and have opportunities to write clearly, accurately and coherently in a range of contexts; write in different styles and for different purposes and audiences; develop a wide vocabulary and a solid understanding of grammar rules; apply spelling patterns correctly and present their work well. We aim to immerse the children in a rich, creative and carefully planned curriculum.
We encourage children to take pride in the presentation of their writing, and develop a neat, joined, handwriting style by the time they leave our school.
We teach our children to be able to identify their own areas for improvement in writing, so that they can edit their work effectively during and after the writing process. We want children to understand and learn the craft of writing so that they plan produce and publish work they are proud of.
Miss Grundy is our English subject Leader.
Reading is taught through the VIPERS skills:
- Vocabulary
- Inference
- Prediction
- Explanation
- Retrieval
- Sequence/Summarise
The weekly reading cycle includes developing fluency and prosody through independent, group, and echo reading. Children have the opportunity to apply their skimming and scanning skills and engage in group discussions about text types and the author’s choice of words.
Each year, children begin by following the Grammarsaurus Place Value of Punctuation and Grammar program. This ensures they have a secure knowledge of sentence construction and grammatical techniques as a basis for writing in English and across the curriculum. At St Michael’s, we follow a two-week writing cycle. During this time, we analyse a high-quality model text and identify key features of the text type. The cycle includes grammar and sentence-level work based on a range of genres. Staff support writing through a mixture of modeling and shared writing techniques. Each half term, children have the opportunity to independently plan, draft, edit, and publish a range of texts.
Writing opportunities are integrated across all subjects in the curriculum, especially in RE, Science, and History/Geography. This ensures that our children are given a real purpose for writing.
Each year, children begin by following the Grammarsaurus Place Value of Punctuation and Grammar program. This ensures they have a secure knowledge of sentence construction and grammatical techniques as a basis for writing in English and across the curriculum. Grammar is taught both discretely and through English writing lessons.
