"Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes and having fun." – Mary Lou Cook.
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:
At XII Apostles, we strive for our children to receive the very best education by providing an exciting, broad, balanced, engaging and creative English curriculum, ensuring they develop the necessary substantive and disciplinary knowledge in reading and writing thus enabling them to fulfil their human potential in all curriculum areas.
We ensure and provide opportunities our children to practise, develop, explore and utilise their skills for real and meaningful purposes across the whole curriculum in order to express themselves effectively, develop confidence and identity and thus contribute positively to the world around them.
English is a core subject and is taught daily. However, it is interwoven throughout the whole curriculum and plays an integral part in our cross curricular approach. Opportunities for practise and development of substantive and disciplinary knowledge are developed and built upon so that our children experience and appreciate the value of English to them now, and in their futures, through many different vehicles and in many different contexts.
Our mission is clear: we aim to ensure that all children fulfil their human potential. We have a supportive ethos and our approach supports the children in developing their collaborative and independent skills, as well as empathy and the need to recognise the achievement of others. Children can underperform in English because of a lack of aspiration or a fixed mind set towards their own potential. The principles behind incorporating and interweaving all elements of English throughout the writing progress, especially spoken language, ensures that all children experience challenge and success in English. Regular, meaningful and engaging practise, development and application of skills throughout all areas of the curriculum and for differing purposes, ensures children have the opportunity to communicate and express themselves. Through the development of their own ‘voice’, subsequent opportunities to further develop their self-belief and other characteristics of a growth mind set are utilised. Regular and ongoing assessment enables adaptive teaching methods to be utilised to enable the success of each child. These factors ensure that we are able to maintain high standards, with progress by the end of KS2 being well above the national average.
Phonics is taught following the 'Supersonic Phonics Friends' scheme (Anna Lucas). It is taught daily to all children in Key Stage 1. For those children in Key stage 2 who need further practise and support, phonics 'bursts' are utilised.
Handwriting Long Term Plan Overview
Writing Long Term Plan Overview