“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein (philosopher)

English Intent

At Ann Edwards we are passionate about empowering our children by giving them the skills, knowledge and confidence to communicate their thoughts and feelings, as well as having the opportunity to creatively express themselves. We precision teach systematic synthetic phonics, currently using Letters and Sounds (transitioning to Phonics Bug), beginning with our youngest pupils and extending across the whole school. Research continues to show that robust phonics teaching will lay solid foundations for pupils to build towards becoming fluent, confident and competent readers and we place it at the heart of our learning progression. Once acquired, children can begin to develop other areas of their reading, such as comprehension, which they are taught specifically through carefully sequenced guided reading sessions and targeted interventions, where appropriate.

We are committed to embedding oracy within and across all subjects and seek to underpin our curriculum with the teaching of four fundamental strands of oracy: physical, linguistic, cognitive, social and emotional. With oracy at the centre of our children’s learning, they will gain the skills they will need to become effective speakers and listeners, helping them to not only understand themselves, but the wider world around them.

With this in mind, an overarching focal point, for us as a school, is our endeavour to close the vocabulary gap within and across year groups. We strive to achieve this through focussed vocabulary teaching and providing time for the children to embed the language they have learnt. Inspired by acclaimed literature, our three part, whole-school writing process – with oracy at its core – allows our dedicated team to ensure lessons are innovative, fun and purposeful for all learners. It is important to us that our pupils achieve their full potential and are prepared for the next stage of their education. We help our pupils communicate their thoughts, ideas and emotions in a clear and healthy way, whilst also creating a life-long love and appreciation of language, reading and writing.

The national curriculum for English aims to ensure that all pupils:

  • read easily, fluently and with good understanding
  • develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
  •  acquire a wide vocabulary,
  • an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading.

 

Writing and Spoken Language

  • appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
  • write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
  • use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas
  • are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate.

 

Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG)

 

We use the programme ‘Essential Letters and Sounds’ for our phonics teaching and we use ‘Phonics Tracker’ to assess the children’s progress. The links below have more information about the way we teach phonics at Ann Edwards.