English
"English has a pre-eminent place in education and in society. A high-quality education in English will 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. All the skills of language are essential to participating fully as a member of society; pupils, therefore, who do not learn to speak, read and write fluently and confidently are effectively disenfranchised."
National Curriculum, 2013
Teachers cover aspects of the English curriculum every term. As children move through Wellington, their speaking and listening, reading and writing develops in different genres of narrative, non-fiction and poetry as their skills grow in the areas of vocabulary, grammar and punctuation, spelling and handwriting.
We also use 'Progression in Language Structures' to develop children's functional language across the curriculum.
Click on each year group below to see how the English curriculum is covered, and below to see progression for language structures.
Reading
Reading is the key to the wider curriculum. At Wellington, we foster a love of reading through our well planned reading learning journey.
Children are supported to gain the skills for reading throughout Early Years and Key Stage 1 through the consistent teaching of our systematic synthetic phonics scheme.
At Wellington, we use the THE Partnership Phonics Programme. Further information about this DfE validated phonics programme can be found here:
https://www.the-partnership.org.uk/school-improvement/the-partnership-phonics-programme
This scheme is supported by high quality, engaging phonetically decodable books that the children can read and use to practise their phonics skills. These phonetically decodable books are from:
- Big Cat Phonics Collins
- Pearson Phonics Bug Club
When children have learnt to consistently apply phonics to read, they are supported to continue to make progress through high quality levelled reading books and further reading skills development. Children are taught wider reading skills through shared reading and daily story time as well as being given opportunities to practise their skills during guided reading sessions. We are ambitious for our pupils and focus on helping them to develop a strong foundation of reading skills so that they can work towards becoming confident readers who enjoy reading.
At Wellington, we use a systematic synthetic phonics scheme that teaches phonics skills from Nursery, where Phase 1 pre-reading skills are taught. Phases 2 to 5 are taught in Reception and Year 1, and we aim for all children to be able to confidently segment and blend in order to read by the end of Year 1. At the end of Year 1, children are assessed using the statutory national phonics screening assessment.
Any pupils who do not achieve the threshold score will continue to be taught phonics and will be re-assessed at the end of Year 2. Children at Wellington consistently achieve above national levels in the phonics screening assessment at the end of Year 1.
Phonics skills are revisited in Year 2 to ensure knowledge is secure. For those who have gaps in their phonics knowledge and skills application, further support is put in place in Year 2 and into KS2 as needed.