English

Ashleigh has a rigorous approach to the teaching of English that ensures all our children leave the school with secure knowledge in reading and writing. Underpinning this is the development of oracy; we have a focus across our curriculum on oral language development.

Reading

Our reading programme promotes a lifelong love of reading and ensures children have a good grounding in phonics before they graduate to our bespoke programme, which includes Read Write Inc and Accelerated Reader, two renowned approaches to developing primary aged readers. You can find our more about how we teach reading here.

Writing

Children have a daily lesson to develop their writing. This is grounded in a deep understanding of the purpose and audience of writing, the mechanics such as handwriting, spelling and grammar, together with developing authorial craft and writers' flair.

Children develop their writing through the use of high quality model texts which exemplify core writing features. These texts provide an entitlement to great books which are mapped out to the National Curriculum in a progressive sequence, ensuring all children have the opportunity to be challenged appropriately. 

EYFS:

Driver texts are chosen that link to the main topics. Opportunities for speaking, listening and writing are drawn from these texts to provide children with a purpose for writing. 

KS1:

The Literacy Tree provides structure to the progression of texts from years 1-6. In year 1, text selection is also drawn from the Babcock sequences with planning structured to provide links between The Literacy Tree and our wider curriculum. This ensures that children learn the pattern of high-quality texts, practise innovating writing with a supporting scaffold and then are able to harness their creativity to produce their own independent writes.  

KS2:

The Literacy Tree units are used as a stimulus, mapping objectives from the National Curriculum where elements identified from independent writing can also be incorporated. This allows several independent written outcomes within sequences providing plenty of opportunities for creativity and writing at length. Vocabulary from the statutory spelling lists and tier 2/3 vocabulary is mapped by teachers.  

We use the Literary Curriculum, a book-based approach created so that there is a more consistent, cohesive pedagogy used across the school. Developed by The Literacy Tree,  the Literary Curriculum immerses children in a literary world, creating strong levels of engagement to provide meaningful and authentic contexts for learning. Children become critical readers and acquire an authorial style as they encounter a wide-range of significant authors and a variety of fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

Teachers use live modelling, where they act as an author to ensure that our children can think through their writing and the impact it has on an audience. Developing children's vocabulary is a key element of our teaching and teachers develop children's vocabulary for writing (termed tier 2 words) together with subject specific, technical language (tier 3 words). We teach spelling and grammar using a scheme which is closely aligned to the National Curriculum expectations.