English

Reading is like breathing in; writing like breathing out.

Curriculum Intent

At Buckingham Primary School, we believe that a quality English curriculum should develop children’s love of reading, writing and discussion. We want our children to:

• Read for pleasure, having had access to a wide range of poems, text types, genres and authors.
• Be able to talk with enthusiasm about books, their preferences and their favourite authors.
• Be confident in the art of speaking and listening and be able to use discussion to communicate and further their learning.
• Be exposed to a wide range of ambitious and challenging vocabulary.
• Write clearly and accurately and adapt their language and style for a range of purposes.
• Be able to write with grammatical accuracy and be able to apply spelling patterns accurately.
• Take pride in the presentation of their writing, in part by developing a neat, cursive handwriting style.
• Identify their own areas for improvement in their writing, editing their writing during and after the writing process.

Writing at Buckingham

At Buckingham, each year group uses poetry, songs, classic texts and books by contemporary authors, to teach the necessary knowledge and skills of the curriculum. Children also have the opportunity for ‘real life’ contexts for writing, e.g. a recount from a school trip. Over the course of the year, planning is divided into units of work.

Units of Work

These ‘units of work’, will last anywhere between two to four weeks to complete. Using a book, story or poem, as the foundation for learning, the class teacher will plan for two to three written outcomes during this time. The class teacher will write an ‘exemplar text’. This text will incorporate the correct ‘text features’ of the genre and the skills and knowledge expected for that year group, outlined in the national curriculum. In the lessons leading up to the first reading of the exemplar, the children will immerse themselves in the text they are studying. They will be taught, and have the opportunity to explore and practise, any text features or spelling, punctuation and grammar conventions that will subsequently be identified in the exemplar text.

(Insert English Units of Work)