Benton Dene Schools

English


Phonics Policy	Handwriting Policy	Reading Policy	Writing Policy

‘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’ Department for Education (2014)National Curriculum: English programmes of study

Our English section has pages with further information on more specific areas. Please click the links below for more detail.

Reading	Writing	Read, Write, Inc (RWI)

Intent
At Benton Dene School we have developed a quality Literacy (English) curriculum which has been developed to enhance our children’s interest and enjoyment of reading, writing, speaking and listening. Our curriculum follows a clear pathway of progression and is coherently planned and sequenced as they progress through our primary curriculum.

Our English curriculum is broad and balanced for all pupils offering a Quality First Teaching (QFT) approach that is highly integral to raise achievement for all of our children. It is our intention to ensure that, by the end of their primary education, all pupils have been given the best possible opportunities to develop their creative writing skills and opportunities to develop reading fluently with confidence in any subject in our school curriculum, preparing them for their forthcoming secondary education.

Implementation
The intent is embedded across our English lessons and our wider curriculum. Teachers at Benton Dene School adapt the National Curriculum as appropriate to meet the needs of their classes, but also ensure that cross curricular links with concurrent topic work are woven into the programme of study. For example; teaching key vocabulary, questioning, speaking and listening activities, composing and writing sentences, teaching reading, spelling work and subject text work to develop comprehension and composition skills and the understanding of print. Our curriculum closely follows the aims of the National Curriculum for English 2014.

The national curriculum for English aims to ensure that all pupils:

● read easily, fluently and with good understanding
● develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
● acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic
conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
● appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
● write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style for a range of
contexts, purposes and audiences
● use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly
their understanding and ideas
● are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations,
demonstrating to others and participating in debate.

In addition to daily English lessons, children have regular opportunities to read with an adult and to an adult, to read for pleasure experiencing a range of genres of books, to practise handwriting and to develop their phonic knowledge. We use a wide variety of quality texts and resources to engage, motivate and inspire our children throughout our English Curriculum. We also provide a wealth of enrichment opportunities, from offering after school book clubs to writing plays and performing them.

Impact
As a result we have a community of enthusiastic readers and writers who enjoy showcasing their developing literacy knowledge and skills. They are confident to take risks in their reading and writing, and love to discuss and share their ideas. Their enjoyment of reading is fully preparing them for the next steps in their education as they transition into secondary provision.

What does English look like at Benton Dene?

At Benton Dene we focus on each child’s individual starting points, adapting the English learning to meet their individual needs. Therefore, children will access their English learning in a variety of ways and we employ a toolkit of methods and interventions to support our children.

However all children at Benton Dene will receive the following English specific lessons each week:

Daily morning work - reading 1:1 with an adult and completing handwriting.
4x English lessons (Talk 4 Writing) - these are book based lessons, developing their individual English curriculum needs.
1x Comprehension lesson - utilising a scheme to develop comprehension skills and understanding of what they are seeing/reading.
1x Writing lesson - utilising a handwriting scheme to develop handwriting skills. For our younger children, this may be a fine motor skills programme such as Squiggle while you Wiggle.
Daily reading for pleasure time. All classes have a class story each day.
Phonics teaching - Read, Write, Inc is taught at least 4x a week. Some children will proceed to the Spelling Programme, while our younger children will access Launchpad for Literacy and/or Pre-Phonics.

More information about which interventions and schemes your child(ren) are working on, can be found on their Pupil Passport or by asking a member of their class team.

We use Cued Articulation to support our pupils. It is a set of hand cues for teaching the individual sounds in a word. The hand movements are logical – each hand movement represents one sound and the cue gives clues as to how and where the sound is produced.
It is not a sign language where the whole word is signed – but Cued Articulation can be used alongside sign language. Cued Articulation should not be confused with ‘Cued Speech’.