At Middle Park children are taught English following the Nation Curriculum Programme of Study. We structure our lessons to ensure a balance of English themes and topics in each year group and a progression of skills across the school. We link work to other areas of the curriculum where this is most appropriate but also teach purely text-based literature units of work, poetry and non-fiction.
The English Curriculum develops children’s communication skills through reading, speaking, listening and writing. During our English lessons, we want our children to have a sense of themselves as writers. They write with enthusiasm; expressing themselves, taking risks, creating, formulating and developing their ideas. They are confident at adapting their writing for a range of audiences and are encouraged to refine their ideas through editing and improving and are able to present the best versions of themselves on the page. Middle Park children enjoy the creative journey that is writing and learn who they are as writers and find their inner voice.
At Middle Park, early reading will be taught using systematic, synthetic phonics as the main approach to reading. Children are systematically taught the phonemes (sounds), how to blend the sounds in words for reading, and how to segment the sounds in order to write. They will be taught to use their phonic skills and knowledge as their first approach to reading, but will also be taught high frequency words and tricky words which do not completely follow the phonic rules.
Reading is a central part of every children’s life at our school and is at the heart of our curriculum; every child in our school is a reader and so are the adults that surround them. The school follows the government validated programme Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.
At our school, all our early reading books are matched perfectly to the Little Wandle progression and support all the Letters and Sounds phases. There is an exciting mix of stories and non-fiction to foster a love of reading in all children. All of the books within the Collins Big Cat scheme can be decoded using phonics skills and knowledge – children will be encouraged to use their phonics skills to read. The decodable reading practice books are assigned to individual children in e-book format to ensure success is shared with the family.
