Earlham Primary School

Our English curriculum is based on one key belief that all the skills of language are essential to participating fully as a member of society; those who cannot speak, read or write fluently are effectively disenfranchised;

A high-quality education in English will teach pupils to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them. Through reading in particular, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Reading also enables pupils both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know;

Speaking, listening and reading are the building blocks from which high quality writing emerges;

Learning is supported by carefully selected high quality texts, some of which are unashamedly ambitious;

Our selection of texts ensures our children explore a balance of genres: classic tales, Shakespeare, modern fiction, picture and wordless books, myths and legends, poetry and non-fiction;

We believe that stories are how we explore and make sense of the world beyond our own experience;

We follow the national curriculum. Learning is sequenced so that over their years with us children are exposed to increasingly complex language and structure and will have the knowledge and skills to access these texts and then start to incorporate aspects of language and structure in their own writing;

Teachers read aloud to every year group every day (our ‘serial read’), as we believe this offers our children opportunities to hear stories and language they would not access themselves, and models the joy of reading for pleasure. We want these books to take our children on a reading journey, to prompt thoughts, emotions and ideas, to help them understand their own emotional responses to texts;

Our serial read texts are carefully selected to tap into feelings and emotions, prompt thought and discussion, and expose the children to a variety of classic and new fiction by some key authors. We review these each year in line with children’s interests and responses;

A key focus for the whole school is using drama in our teaching across the curriculum to support pupils to improve engagement, deepen understanding, help children identify with and explore characters or historical figures, explain new concepts and new vocabulary, help pupils develop and order ideas and address misconceptions. We know from our own school teacher research that drama makes texts and information much more accessible to our EAL pupils;

Poetry is another key focus for our school; we believe poetry offers children an accessible but powerful format for exploring and expressing emotions, opinions and experiences.