At St Michael’s, we are explorers of our own learning.

The English curriculum at St. Michael’s strives to support learners to reach national standards and beyond, whilst instilling a life-long love of learning and preparing them for the next stage of their educational journey. Reading is steeped throughout our Explore Curriculum as we maximise opportunities to delve into books across all subject areas, inspiring children to leave our school with a passion for books and a zest for reading. In pursuit of knowledge, our children acquire rich, aspirational vocabulary which allows them to explore new topics and articulate their learning. Year-on-year, children build on their knowledge and skills through a carefully sequenced, progressive curriculum, enabling them to unlock new learning and explore new concepts.

English is woven throughout our entire curriculum: we teach pupils to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others, and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them. Through reading in particular, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development. Reading also enables pupils both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know, revisiting prior learning through retrieval practice to ensure key concepts are embedded. All the skills of language are essential to prepare our children to become well-rounded members of society.

We follow Read Write Inc. phonics, where we aim that every child, regardless of their age, background or need,  learns to read accurately and fluently and develops a love of reading.

We follow Ready Steady Write as our whole-school approach to teaching writing, intertwined with our own teaching and learning strategy, rooted around Rosenshine’s principles of effective instruction.

We use Reading Eggs and Reading Plus (age/stage dependant) as additional reading resources to develop children’s reading skills.

We use Ready Steady Read / Ready Steady Read Together as our chosen approach to the teaching of reading, supported by the Literacy Shed’s Reading VIPERS.

Reading

Our shared reading curriculum is built around a carefully sequenced range of high-quality, age-appropriate texts using Literacy Counts’ Ready Steady Read Together units of learning. This resource provides dynamic and inclusive lessons that incorporate meta cognitive strategies and showcase diverse literature from a range of exceptional authors. It aims to inspire children and their families to develop a lifelong love of reading for pleasure, knowledge and information.

We intend that all pupils from Year 2 to Year 6, regardless of need, ability or background, have the opportunity to meet and where possible exceed the National Curriculum expectations for reading comprehension. Ready Steady Read Together ensures that every pupil has access to high quality texts, enabling them to experience rich literature that develops fluency, vocabulary and deep understanding.
Through explicit teacher modelling of expression, pace, intonation and prosody, children learn how skilled readers bring meaning to a text and how these features support comprehension. Shared reading also provides regular opportunities for discussion, questioning, drama and exploration of language. These approaches deepen comprehension while strengthening oracy skills.
Crucially, our shared reading curriculum ensures that every child, regardless of their decoding ability, can access ambitious texts, engage meaningfully with literature and develop the habit of reading widely and often for both pleasure and learning.

Writing

Our writing curriculum is designed to provide a broad and balanced education that meets the needs of all children. We follow the award-winning Ready Steady Write from Literacy Counts to develop confident, independent and successful writers with high aspirations. Our writing curriculum is research-informed and impact-proven, carefully designed to support all children to master the foundational skills and write for a clear audience and purpose. Through the use of high-quality, vocabulary-rich texts, we provide exciting and meaningful reasons to write. Children are immersed in literature and taught to craft their writing with precision, using a range of pedagogical approaches, including sentence accuracy, modelled writing and shared writing, as well as regular opportunities for editing. We value spoken language as a foundation for writing. Through structured talk, drama and vocabulary exploration, children learn how to organise and express their ideas clearly before writing them down. Our aim is for every child – regardless of need – to write fluently and take pride in their work. We want our pupils to leave primary school as enthusiastic writers, ready for the next stage of their education.

 

Please see our English Policy at the bottom of this page for further information to find out about the intent, implementation and impact.

Parents/carers were invited along to read a book with their children and have some breakfast before school started. Parents and children got to share a story with each other with some parents/carers reading to their children and some children reading aloud to their parents/carers. What a lovely atmosphere experience to share our love for reading with each other!

At St. Michael’s, we fully embrace World Book Day every year. We immerse ourselves into a school-wide text that we read, share and enjoy. This year, our focus text was We Are All Wonders R.J Pacacio.

During World  Book Day, children and staff alike dressed up as their favourite book characters, or came into school in pyjamas, ready to curl up with a book. We had ‘Book Buddies’, where we went to other classes and read with different children, had a whole school book swap and a lot of ‘DEAR’ time!

Take a look at our useful websites to help your child with their reading and writing:

SPaG Games

Reading Eggs 

Reading Plus

Oxford Owl Online Library

BBC Bitesize SPaG

Spelling Frame

Just click a button below to View any document, you will then have the option to Download or Print the file. You can access all of our policies and reports on the website. Please contact the school if you would like any paper versions of our documents.