English knowledge and skills form the cornerstone of our curriculum. We develop our pupils’ skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening throughout all our teaching and learning, all of the time. It is our aim to enable all children to be successful communicators through all of the English mediums.

From Nursery at Tyntesfield, children are immersed in a world of pictures and words through the use of texts which are rich in meaning. We aim to inspire children and develop in them, a deep and abiding love of language. Our English curriculum has been designed to challenge and enchant the children, to thrill or to make them question; we believe passionately that children learn best when their learning has a context and are ‘hooked-in’.  This philosophy of learning transcends English and underpins everything we do at Tyntesfield Primary School.

We enable our pupils’ development through high quality teaching and learning opportunities, carefully planned and coordinated to ensure a progressive building of skills and knowledge which the children apply to their learning across the curriculum subjects. The foundation of our teaching is to enable cooperative learning structures that call on the pupils to share, listen and respond, therefore creating skilled listeners and conversationalists. We have a heavy focus on Reading within all subject areas, developing reading skills but also the deeper comprehension that comes through effective discussion and making personal connections.

English at Tyntesfield

We instil a love of reading in pupils through daily lessons, author visits, allocated reading time and a well-stocked library!  Staff lead by example, ensuring pupils enjoy hearing texts read every day. Pupils’ reading skills are developed through engaging with a wide range of reading material and media, with a focus on; use of questioning (to challenge thinking at all levels); taught strategies for comprehension; monitoring and understanding of the key reading skills. Reading is at the heart of our teaching and learning, inspiring the children to be life-long readers themselves.

Reading

Our English framework places value on the key skills of Speaking and Listening as children are encouraged to respond to texts and develop the ability to articulate their ideas. Children are taught to use the conventions of discussion and debate and use drama as a vehicle to explore the characters and worlds they find themselves in, building confidence along the way.  

Spoken language and pupils’ skills in Oracy underpin development and progression in both reading and writing; allowing children the time to ask questions about a book, talk about it and simply wonder, is something that we believe is fundamental in helping lay the foundations for a lifelong love and appreciation of the written word in all its forms.  We develop our pupils’ abilities through our high expectations of participation alongside the presentation of all our English outcomes shared through real-life, relevant opportunities. Pupils are encouraged to develop their performance, from our choral poetry competition, to assembly presentations and reading their finished pieces to their peers: we value these experiences as part of our English teaching process. The core elements of our English curriculum thread through all lessons, our quality teaching ethos and our text-led curriculum, so that pupils are constantly immersed in a rich language culture whilst also being encouraged to apply their understanding within other contexts to further deepen their knowledge of this key subject.

Quality Texts also provide a valuable platform for teachers to develop children’s comprehension skills. Through the interrogation of images and language, we develop skills in inference and deduction, discuss why authors choose the language they choose and make connections with other texts and authors we have encountered.

Speaking and Listening

Writing soon follows and in this way, children follow a ‘process’ which starts with Speaking and Listening and brings together the different strands of English in a meaningful, contextualised way. Children begin to ‘read as writers’, exploring how grammar and sentence construction can be employed to create an effect and similarly, how vocabulary sits alongside to engage the reader. 

At Tyntesfield we recognise that quality writing is a product of following a process of planning, crafting a range of engaging sentences, using success criteria, drafting and editing. From Nursery upwards, pupils are immersed in rich opportunities for writing and take great pride in improving their vocabulary and developing their individual writing style. When writing, pupils are presented with high quality stimuli, including quality texts to inform their writing in varied and enticing ways with ongoing opportunities to consolidate and reinforce these vital key skills such as understanding of word, sentence and whole text development. A drafting and editing process takes place and children are taught that even the best authors do not get it right at the first time of asking rather we polish, edit and revise at word, sentence and paragraph level working with our fellow writers in the class to improve and refine. A final piece of writing is therefore a genuine labour of love and we endeavour to share these with others in different ways to ensure that children’s writing has a real purpose. 

Teaching spelling, punctuation and grammar skills is also an integral part of our English lessons and pupils’ proficiency is developed through imaginative, stimulating and interactive activities. Vocabulary is vital and the children learn that words are not only the building blocks of the sentences we craft, but a tool to express our ideas and emotions. 

Writing