English

Intent

At Swaffield, our English curriculum is designed to develop children’s love of reading and writing and prepare children for life as successful, valuable and responsible citizens. Our carefully sequenced, broad and balanced curriculum is underpinned by inclusive high quality texts which the children explore in depth. This exposes our learners to a wealth of rich vocabulary and writing styles within an authentic context. We believe that a secure
basis in literacy skills is crucial to a high quality education and attainment across all areas of the curriculum.

Reading in KS2

We know that reading is a fundamental skill that improves life chances. Enjoying reading and engaging in a range of literature has a profound effect on children’s academic progress and emotional well-being. Our aim at Swaffield is to inspire, engage and challenge pupils and develop key skills to enable all children to become fluent and confident readers regardless of their starting point and strive to enable good progress through high quality teaching and learning.

Implementation

We teach reading comprehension through daily reading lessons. Each half term, children will read and analyse a fiction, a non-fiction or a poetry text. Reading lessons include:

Unpicking the key skill focus for that lesson (retrieval, inference, prediction, summarising, vocabulary, making links)
Modelled answering of questions
A close look at key vocabulary that children may be unfamiliar with
Reading fluently and with expression
A weekly visit to the school library
Teaching fluency by model reading, echo reading, choral reading
and paired reading

In addition to our reading lessons in KS2, we also provide children with:

Opportunities to read for pleasure
Daily Rapid Catch-up for children in Years 2-6 (for any child who is not a fluent reader)
Books that the children take home are carefully chosen to match the children's interests and their level of fluency.

For information about our approach to Early Reading/Phonics (Early Years and KS1) please go to our Early Reading page

We also have a number of reading enrichment activities, including:

Whole school involvement in the National CLiPPA poetry competition targeting different genres of poetry and performance skills. We have won for two consecutive years!
Pyjama Day for World Book Day – to raise the profile of stories at bedtime
Swaffield’s Big Read – a sponsored reading event for the whole school
Class reading book competitions
Participation in local reading competitions including the Summer Reading Challenge, run by local libraries
Visits from authors and poets
Visits to the local library to see authors and attend events such as a Windrush workshop

• Reading buddies- teaming up older and younger classes to share favourite
books together

• First News available to KS2 to offer authentic non-fiction material to provide
the cultural capital they need in life

• In addition, 1:1 reading is put in place for children that need extra practice.
Books that the children take home are carefully chosen to match the
children’s interests and their level of fluency.

Promoting reading for pleasure is hugely important to us at Swaffield. In addition to the in-class book corners, the school boasts a wonderful library which all children visit weekly. Here they are encouraged to select books to read and enjoy independently. At the end of every school day, the children enjoy listening to their teacher read to them from the class book which is selected to reflect the children’s interests.

Reading - Genre Progression By Year Group:

Writing

The children at Swaffield take great pride in their written work; they write clearly, imaginatively and accurately adapting their language and style for a range of purposes.

Implementation

Our writing curriculum is based on language-rich books in which the children are immersed. This allows them time to develop a deeper understanding of characters, plot line, structure and appropriate grammar and vocabulary for the text type. In addition to exploring the class book, teachers model appropriate aspects of writing in class to help children understand the characteristics of different genres.

We are in our fourth year of working with the CLPE Reflecting Realities project, which aims to ensure that every child, regardless of their background, gender, ethnicity, family type or ability, is able to see themselves in the literature they have available to them at school. It provides children with access to quality literature, which supports them to be valuable contributors to life in a diverse, multi-cultural society. In understanding what it is to be a citizen in a modern and diverse Great Britain, we teach our children British Values – to value our community and to celebrate diversity in the UK. The books selected feature a diverse range of central characters within books, including those who are neuro diverse and have disabilities. We believe that to feel truly valued, all children deserve to see themselves in the books they are reading/having read to them, and to feel represented in the literature that they are accessing at school.

Alongside this, children are taught the key grammar objectives for their year group within the teaching units to help them write accurately and understand the correct terminology.

Both handwriting and spellings are taught alongside our English lesson. While phonics continues to be an important tool in spelling, spelling patterns, etymology and morphology are explored during lessons to deepen children’s understanding of language and knowledge of age appropriate vocabulary.

Whole School Overview of Writing

Impact

By the time the children leave Swaffield in Year 6, they will have written a range of texts including narratives, poetry, information, persuasion, explanation and discussion. These themes are revisited at a greater level of complexity as the children move up the school, so children will develop confidence and accuracy by the end of Y6.

By following our English curriculum, our pupils will be enthusiastic readers, writers and speakers and be confident to take risks in their reading and writing. They will have the ability to produce high-quality writing across a range of forms and adapt their writing successfully, considering the audience and purpose. They will have a rich and varied vocabulary which they can use across the curriculum. They will have a love of discussion and enjoy showcasing their knowledge and skills and they will have the passion and skills to access the KS3 curriculum and beyond.

English Curriculum

Visit our Curriculum page which gives details of Swaffield's 2024/2025 curriculum for each year group.

Phonics

Phonics (reading and spelling)

At Swaffield Primary School, we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic synthetic phonics programme.

Visit our Early Reading (phonics) page to find out more.