Curriculum Intent
Our English curriculum will empower our children with the skills to communicate creatively, thoughtfully and imaginatively. It will address the needs of our pupils and their individual academic and emotional starting points. Many of our children have had prolonged periods of absence from school and subsequently have negative feelings about school and their academic abilities, we will address this with a motivating and engaging English curriculum which builds on small steps of learning and is underpinned by a solid understanding of their prior knowledge and skills. Through this carefully individualised plan children will develop a love of communication, reading and writing and they will feel successful because their achievements will be celebrated.
We will address social disadvantages by ensuring that our curriculum addresses gaps in knowledge and skills and improves outcomes. All staff will have a good understanding of the lasting impact of a poor literacy diet and we will ensure that we compensate for children’s previous lack of reading and story time opportunities and we will address impoverished language.
Our English curriculum is bespoke to our children and sets out to broaden their limited experiences and develop our pupils culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Through an engaging curriculum children will develop a positive growth mind set and a resilient attitude where they learn from their mistakes and persevere. We aim to create confident and articulate speakers, who are independent and imaginative writers with a lifelong passion for reading. The English curriculum at Lea Hall Academy will enable our children to become resilient and reflective lifelong learners and to ultimately have a positive engagement with the world at large and participate fully as a member of the community they live in.
Spoken Language
Our English curriculum is underpinned by spoken language. We will develop pupils’ spoken language and address the vocabulary gap at every opportunity during their time at Lea Hall Academy. We will address impoverished language through high quality discussion and exposure to rich texts.
Our pupils will develop confidence and competence in both spoken language and listening skills. They will be exposed to good quality language skills through high quality discussion and communication with staff.
Pupils will develop the capacity to explain their thoughts and ideas and to prepare their ideas before they write. They will be able to explain their understanding of books and other reading. They will be able to articulate and justify answers, arguments and opinions. In our context at Lea Hall Academy we will develop pupils’ communication with each other at a social level so that they listen and respond appropriately and consider and value different viewpoints. We will develop their participation in conversations through good modelling and creating opportunities for talk. We will give our pupils access to a wide variety of enrichment opportunities in order to develop their ideas, broaden their experiences and develop their spoken language.
Reading
Our reading curriculum will ensure that our pupils become lifelong readers. They will develop the habit of reading widely and often, both for pleasure and for information. Story time will be a key element to our reading curriculum. Our children will have the opportunity to listen to a story regularly. This will begin to redress the balance of the lack of story time some of our children have been engaged in previously. Our curriculum will enable our pupils to read fluently (word reading) and with good understanding (comprehension). We will improve pupils’ word reading and phonic knowledge through the Read Write Inc. phonics scheme. Children will be taught effective comprehension skills, they will be able to: use background knowledge; visualisation; identify and understand new and key vocabulary; use inference (being a detective); make predictions and develop the skills to identify and repair break down in meaning.
Reading will be planned to ensure that the sequence that children follow builds on what has been taught before therefore improving outcomes for each pupil.
Children will receive a range of reading activities throughout the week: reading to a member of staff, shared reading, reading for pleasure, library time, guided reading, story time, storytelling (children and teaching staff).
Our pupils will be exposed to rich texts that sit alongside high quality discussions with their teacher. The reading curriculum at Lea Hall Academy will address both the vocabulary gap and impoverished language. Pupils will be encouraged to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop a knowledge of themselves in the world in which they live and gain knowledge across the curriculum.
Writing
Our writing curriculum will enable our pupils to develop the use of a wide variety of forms for different purpose and audiences. It will enable our pupils to write with confidence and fluency through effective transcription and effective composition. In order to do this our pupils will use good quality texts to influence their own writing. These texts will be used systematically and in depth to highlight the elements of good writing and to develop vocabulary for their own writing. Pupils will be able to use richer vocabulary due to wider reading, effective teaching of new vocabulary and high quality discussions. Pupils will understand the relationships between words and how to develop, understand and use figurative language.
Through this text based approach children will develop effective styles, organising and structuring sentences grammatically and coherently. They will use accurate punctuation, correct spelling and legible handwriting. Our pupils will be able to articulate and communicate their ideas and organise them coherently for the reader.
They will understand the importance of writing in the wider world and be able to develop ideas and communicate meaning to the reader.