English at Haslam Park Primary School 

English subject lead:

 Mrs G Harding-Yung - BA (hons) History / NPQSL (Maternity Leave) Interim Lead - Mrs E Griffin

English Intent  

The overarching aim for English in the national curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written language, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment. 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 

At Haslam Park Primary School, we believe all pupils (particularly SEND and disadvantaged pupils) are entitled to access a high-quality English curriculum which has been designed to not only allow them to fulfil their individual potential, but also reflects the unique cultural diversity of our school community in Bolton. Our English curriculum will not only fulfill The National Curriculum aims, but also allow our pupils to gain the basic skills, knowledge and cultural capital required to thrive in modern life and to access the next stage of their education. 

It is incredibly important to us that our pupils can relate to, and feel inspired by, the authors and texts they read. In order to achieve this, students are exposed to the rich heritage of literature that both Britain and the world possess. 

Reading underpins our entire curriculum and we strongly believe in the power of reading and its ability to unlock the curriculum and the world around our pupils. Teachers model a love of reading and pupils enjoy and benefit from not only being surrounded by adults who love books, but also from weekly visits to our beautiful, well-stocked libraries. We have sourced texts from across the world in order to ensure that they reflect the children here at Haslam Park. 

All children from Foundation Stage to Year 6 are provided with a range of opportunities to develop and apply their reading, writing and speaking and listening skills across all areas of the curriculum. We believe that a secure basis in all areas of English is crucial to a high-quality education and will provide our children the tools they need to participate fully as a member of society.  

English Implementation

Phonics: 

Daily phonics lessons are delivered in EYFS and KS1, following Floppy’s Phonics. Floppy’s Phonics consists of a two-pronged approach to teaching early reading and spelling, which consists of a systematic and incidental approach: 

• The systematic approach to teaching phonics ensures that children progress speedily through the graphemes throughout the programme and develop their oral segmenting and blending skills. 

• The incidental approach focusses on using the alphabetic code chart to introduce children to graphemes that they haven’t been taught in their phonics lessons, but that they are using in their writing or have used incidentally on a daily basis. This approach ensures that pupils will be challenged early on and are introduced to many alternative spellings and pronunciations when the occasion arises before they are taught them in the systematic approach. 

Pupils are provided with home reading books that closely match their phonic ability and awareness in order to provide pupils with practice in applying what they've learned in their phonics lessons. Any pupils that have been identified as falling behind with their phonic knowledge and awareness are provided with catch up work using the phonics teaching books planned and monitored by class teachers and delivered by fully-trained staff members. Interventions in KS1 and KS2 are delivered to pupils who have yet to pass the phonics screening- this is planned carefully to ensure progress. The impact of interventions is tracked using Phonics Tracker. From year 2, pupils take part in daily spelling lessons using Spelling Shed scheme. Etymology, prefixes and suffixes along with the application of specific spelling patterns are studied and applied.  

Reading(comprehension): 

Pupils are taught that being a reader requires you to use a range of skills in the form of domains, and they are explicitly shared with the pupils. All pupils from year one-six receive daily reading lessons planned around: 

• Accessing quality texts and resources (current class texts or cracking curriculum texts) and  

• Answering domain- specific question stems.  

All reading domains (Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2) are covered across the academic year, following our domain progression document; opportunities to revisit and practice are built in across a range of texts to ensure depth of learning. 

Dedicated readers who demonstrate a love of reading are celebrated through our ‘reader of the half-term' celebration in which pupils receive a book of their choice as well as a certificate to take home. At Haslam Park, pupils also enjoy learning about a different author per half term (Key Stage One) and half term (Key Stage Two) through our ‘Author of the Half/Term’ approach. Each class will receive a collection of books written by their assigned author, and a display promoting the texts is updated at the same time. By the time our pupils leave to move onto secondary school, pupils will have been exposed to thirty authors. We are very proud of this initiative at Haslam Park. 

Every pupil reads their home-school reading book with an adult at least once per week in years 1-6, with disadvantaged pupils reading with an adult 3 times per week. The questions asked during these sessions are carefully-considered and aligned with our domain-focussed reading curriculum. Assessment information is gathered during 1:1 reading sessions in our ‘blue books’ and regular progress checks are conducted to ensure pupils are reading the correct stage of book for their current level of attainment.  We also assess the children' fluency online using the Fisher Family Trust ASPIRE reading fluency check. This is a short task that is carried out three times a year to check the children progress in reading fluency. 

Writing: 

Pupils are taught how to write effectively for a range of reasons by reading, analysing and writing about a current class text, following our ‘Haslam Park Writing Spine’ of texts. The texts were selected after consultation with pupils and staff with the sole intention of not only honouring cultural heritage texts, but also ensuring our pupils can relate to and identify characters in texts and dilemmas and situations they may have faced in real life. This allows us to share British Values and common SMSC themes presented in a wide range of texts.  

Pupils are taught writing daily with teachers following our ‘pathway to writing’ format. Pupils analyse their current text, tease out and practise applying genre-specific grammar features before applying their current learning to a written outcome. Teachers model handwriting, sentence types, grammar and tone during this process and this is shared on working walls to provide pupils with a constant point of reference. Pupils also benefit from a weekly sentence lesson which follows the pattern of ‘Model, analyse, say, write’. We use Alan Peat sentences to ensure that our pupils are exposed to, learn from and begin to apply a range of interesting sentence types from year 1. The weekly sentence lessons are ringfenced time for SEND pupils to work on specific writing targets and objectives.  

Speaking and Listening: 

Our bespoke weekly sentence lessons (as mentioned above) provide our pupils with the opportunity to orally rehearse sentences before they write them- allowing them time to edit and improve as well as orally structuring grammatically correct sentences. We found this to be crucial to our English catch up curriculum, following the COVID 19 pandemic. Pupils are also given opportunities to debate, discuss and present their written work including poems and short creative writing pieces across the curriculum.  

Enrichment: 

Pupils take part in World Book Day events, (including decorate a door competition and live zooms with published authors) book fairs from Scholastic and annual Shakespeare workshops to honour William Shakespeare’s birthday. A different play by William Shakespeare is studied each year (‘Macbeth' in 2023 and 'Romeo and Juliet' coming up in 2024) to ensure depth of understanding of the impact made by William Shakespeare on modern literature. We additionally take part in ‘National Poetry Day’ as a whole school with live performances of traditional nursery rhymes alongside modern poetry. Pupils in Key Stage Two write their own, original poems and perform them to their classmates. Poems are performed between classes in alternate key stages and performances are shared with parents. 

English Impact

The progress made by pupils is gathered in the following ways:  

Writing:  

Pupils’ writing is assessed against the Sheffield STAT writing criterion three times per academic year. During assessment week, pupils are asked to independently produce a piece of previously taught genre of writing during a three lesson sequence. Teachers use this piece (along with writing from the pupils’ English books) to make a well-informed judgement of a pupils’ attainment. By revisiting a previously-taught genre, teachers are gleaning the retained knowledge and skills.  

Reading:  

At Haslam Park, we use NfER assessment papers three times per academic year. This information is then used to produce question level analysis, ensuring teachers have a deep understanding of retained reading skills and domain understanding as well as to inform subsequent teaching.  

We also use Fisher Family Trust Aspire to test the children's reading fluency. This is a quick online test which supports us in assessing the children's reading age. 

Spelling:  

Pupils from year 3 upwards take a weekly spelling test based on the spelling list from that week. Teachers also administer a spelling assessment three times per academic year as part of their SPaG assessments.  

Phonics:  

Pupils in year 1 are regularly assessed using Phonics Tracker. Pupils who have yet to pass the phonics screening test are also regularly assessed with this information passed onto teachers so that their interventions reflect the gaps in sounds.  Children who do not pass the phonics screening test in year 1 will retake it in the summer of year 2. 

Assessment data 2023. The impact of our English curriculum (including reading, SPaG, writing and phonics) is detailed below.