St Amand's Catholic Primary School

English at St Amand's

Through the study of English, we enable our pupils to discover the multi-faceted beauty of communication, understanding and exploration of relationships with themselves, each other and the mysterious nature of God’s world; to recognise that language plays a fundamental role in the growth of our identity and self-image, leading to a human flourishing which transcends limitations and barriers. Exposure to a rich variety of literature and the development of high-level literacy and oracy skills gives them to tools to participate as a global citizen.

Ofsted inspection 2019:

'Reading is made a priority from the moment children join the school.'

'Teaching supports the curriculum well in subjects across the school. It appears to be having the strongest impact in mathematics and English because pupils are clearer here about how their skills and knowledge are being built up over time.'

Phonics and Early Reading

At St Amand's, we believe reading is the key to unlock learning across the curriculum. In EYFS and KS1, children are taught to read using the Little Wandle phonics scheme. They take part in daily phonics sessions to learn new phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (how to write them), as well as tricky words (those words which do not follow the regular phonic rules). At the end of year 1, children sit a phonics screening to assess their decoding skills. 

The Little Wandle approach to reading moves beyond simply decoding words and ensures children are fluent readers. Children in EYFS, year 1 and some year 2s, are allocated a small reading group. Each group focuses on one well-matched text per week and will have three adult-led reading sessions. These sessions focus on fluency, prosody and comprehension. 

Fluency - children should be able to read the book with 90-95% accuracy, this means not overtly blending aloud for more than 5-10% of words. 

Prosody - children learn to read with expression and intonation, taking note of different punctuation. 

Comprehension - children are taught how to find answers to questions using skills of retrieval, inference and prediction. 

By the time children take home their reading book, they have read it three times at school and cannot wait to show off their reading skills to adults at home! 

80% of our year 1 children passed the phonics screening check, Summer 2024.

Reading

From year 3 onwards, children take part in whole class reading sessions. Teachers read their class novel every day for 15 minutes and this is then studied twice a week. Additionally, children take part in reading lessons which focus on short texts or extracts. These may be linked to other areas of the curriculum or areas of interest. 

Children are taught key skills of comprehension and practise these regularly. In reading sessions, there is always rich discussion around the text, with time for individual thinking as well as paired talking and answering.

Data from Summer 2024:

Year 6 SATs 

93% of children achieved the expected level in reading comprehension 

39% of children achieved greater depth 

World Book Day 2024 - children and staff dressed up as anything from a non-ficiton book. Stories were shared by adults across the school and children worked hard in their classes and engaged with several book related activities. Everyone enjoyed a whole school assembly to share what they had been doing. 

We were gifted a beautiful story-telling chair which sits in our Peace Garden. Adults (and children) love to use it for story sessions outdoors. 

Writing

Throughout the school, teachers use a slow writing approach when teaching children how to write for different genres. This approach allows teachers time to model particular sentence types, for example, a sentence containing a co-ordinating conjunction, before children incorporate these into their own writing. The amount of different sentence types children are expected to use builds up over the years. 

Writing is used across the curriculum to engage, inspire and express points of view. Often, children are keen advocates for what they believe in. We encourage collaboration and creativity, especially when this can bring about change for a common good. 

Data from Summer 2024: 

Year 6 moderated writing - 79% of children achieved the expected standard

English Progression Document Years 1-6

English in EYFS

Mark making is the first stage of writing and our children in EYFS love to do this in many ways! They soon learn to form letters and begin to write words and captions. By the end of the year, children begin to construct sentences of their own. 

Story-telling and 'drawing club' are used to help children in EYFS learn new language and rehearse well-known stories, including fairy tales. Children are given the opportunity to explore these stories through sequencing tasks, artwork, role play, music and writing activities. 

Poetry

Poetry forms part of the English curriculum. From EYFS through to year 6, children are taught a range of poems from different genres. Children are taught performance skills, as well as using well-known poems as a basis for creating their own poetry. 

Oracy and Speaking & Listening 

The National Curriculum outlines objectives for children's speaking and listening skills. We move beyond these and believe that every child can be a leader of tomorrow. At St Amand's, we nurture and develop good oracy skills as soon as children begin school. We offer and encourage children to participate in a range of public speaking opportunities, such as: reading at Mass, taking part in school plays, class assemblies, competitions, performing poetry in lessons and many more. 

Rotary Style Public Speaking Competition for Catholic Schools

Three year 5 children took part and won in the annual competition in July 2024. The children had to work together to learn the rotary style of speaking and put together their speech, 'If Animals Could Talk!' 

Rotary Style Public Speaking Competition

Our winning Rotary Style Public Speaking team modelled their skills in speaking to other local SPS schools in September. They led a master class for 6 teams who will compete in a competition in January 2025.