To have courage for whatever comes in life — everything lies in that.
English
‘I am suspicious of both facility and speed. Good writing is essentially rewriting. I am positive of this,” - Roald Dahl
At Regina Coeli, our English curriculum is designed with purposeful intent to ensure that all pupils develop a love for reading and writing and engage critically with books and texts. For this purpose, our curriculum design, which is literacy centred, offers pupils opportunities to read widely and frequently and write for various audiences and purposes. This includes composing poetry, narrative and writing for real events. Within lessons, there are clear opportunities for pupils to develop their speaking and listening skills and use discussion to further their learning. A range of effective pedagogy is implemented in all writing lessons to ensure maximum outcomes for each child. These include drama, role play, hot-seating and conscious alley, all which engage children and make learning enjoyable. Books are chosen carefully to ensure that young readers can access the best of classical and contemporary literature and are inspired as independent writers and debaters on issues of relevance. From the outset, our youngest readers learn to read fluently, using phonetically decodable books and this journey continues through primary school, where children read a variety of picture books, novels, poems, play scripts and non-fiction books. Whole-class reading lessons are often linked to a topic, which contextualises learning and embeds key knowledge, linked to the wider curriculum. This celebration of literature is also demonstrated during our annual Book Week, weekly Book Talk assemblies and our student-led book club, The Whispering Wordsmiths. In addition to this, our pupils are given experiential learning opportunities with special visits from authors and illustrators. There is a keen focus on maintain welcoming book corners in every class room. A deliberate focus is placed developing foundational skills in literacy and teaching vocabulary discretely to reduce the word gap. Within lessons, children design their own semantic maps and play engaging synonym and antonym games to embed vocabulary. Spelling and grammar is taught both explicitly and within the context of independent writing. Often links are made to how ‘real authors’ employ these skills for composition and our children are given the time and space to create their sentences, to a high quality. The school’s literary provision has also been bolstered by our participation on the CLPE’s Reflecting Realities research project, which ensures that we remain abreast of research in literacy.