We will provide all of our children with a broad, relevant and enriched curriculum so that they have the character to make a positive contribution to our society and are knowledgeable, skilled and ready for the next phase of their education.
English at Abbey Mead Primary Academy is an engaging and exciting subject in which pupils are exposed to a range of high quality novels, picture books and non-fiction texts. All English teaching across the school uses our bespoke book-based curriculum to ensure that our children have regular opportunities to read and write across a range of text types and to ensure that they are developing a rich and varied vocabulary. This incorporates a range of strategies that enable our children to see writing as a means of expression and communication.
Our approach to the teaching of English is underpinned by an engaging curriculum which allows children of all abilities to develop the skills to become confident speakers and then transfer these skills into becoming confident writers over time.
As they develop, children are encouraged to see writing as a powerful means of self – expression, a creative form of communication and to write for a range of purposes. Pupils in time develop the stamina and skills to write at length, with increasingly accurate spelling and punctuation.
We explore different types of writing, such as; narratives, explanations, persuasion, descriptions, comparisons, summaries and evaluations. We aim to make writing fun, purposeful and stimulating for our children.
We at Abbey Mead endeavour to ensure that all of our children experience the range of books set out below:
Reading at Abbey
“If we want our children to thrive, teaching them to read is not enough – they must learn to enjoy it”
At Abbey Mead Primary Academy, we recognise that READING is a fundamental life skill. Learning to read and developing a love of reading has a direct impact on a child’s future academic achievements, wellbeing and success in later life.
As many of our children enter Abbey Mead having had limited access to reading mileage and limited exposure to high quality texts, our priority is to address this quickly through our well thought out curriculum design which is progressive and based on a novel rich approach.
Our aim is to ensure that our progressive and transferable reading curriculum is implemented in such a way that every pupil leaves our school as a fluent and confident reader who can successfully comprehend and understand a wide range of texts, enabling them to understand more about the wider world in which they live, through the knowledge they gain from texts. This aim is enacted through the specific teaching and delivery of our bespoke phonics scheme, wider decoding strategies, vocabulary building and the teaching of a wide range of comprehension skills which can be applied across our curriculum.
These strategies, alongside our well-considered and well-resourced curriculum, foster in our children a lifelong love of literature, develop emotional literacy and instil an appreciation of empathy and social skills to equip them for the future.
Spelling
All children in years 1-6 have a weekly spelling test. Please ensure that your child is practising their spellings at home. This will help with their reading and writing. The children are also expected to know the ‘common exception words’ for their age. Please see below these words for your child’s year group.
Handwriting
Handwriting at Abbey Mead is taught in discrete sessions. From Year 1, we use a cursive (joined) style which starts each letter on the line. Developing a cursive script helps children with spelling as it teaches combinations of letters which link together. See our script chart below to see an example of the cursive style we use:
Phonics
Our Phonics scheme is based on the principles of the Partnership Phonics Programme to decoding print. The scheme promotes the use of Phonics as the prime strategy to decode unknown words using graphemes and phonemes in the order in which they occur in a word to decode and spell. The scheme is used in EYFS, KS1 classes and in KS2 as appropriate
Useful Websites
Subject Policies/Plans
English Policy 2023-2024
Reading Whole School Progression Map EYFS-Yr6
Handwriting
Writing progression
Phonics Policy
Year 6 English LTP 23-24
Subject Leader/s
Miss Saujani (Writing)
Miss Cogan & Miss Healey (Reading)
Ms Surani (Phonics)
Miss Fagan (Oracy)
Mrs Sidyot (Oracy)
Impact
Teachers regularly post amazing examples of English learning on our Abbey Mead Twitter feed. Have a look at our twitter feed and the document below to see fantastic learning in action.