English at North Mead Primary Academy is an engaging and exciting subject in which pupils are exposed to a range of high quality novels, picture books and non-fiction texts. All English teaching across the school uses our bespoke book based curriculum to ensure that our children have regular opportunities to read and write across a range of text types and to ensure that they are developing a rich and varied vocabulary. This incorporates a range of strategies that enable our children to see writing as a means of expression and communication. A high standard of spoken language underpins all of our English teaching and we are constantly striving to develop our children’s speaking and listening skills.
In EYFS and KS1, the Read, Write, Inc Phonics program, alongside a book rich curriculum, is used to develop our children’s spoken, reading and writing skills. In KS2, children take part in a daily spelling and handwriting session. We are very proud of the fact that our children are exposed to a large range of superb novels and picture books during their time with us. Within English, children write across a range of text types including: narratives, explanations, descriptions, debates, reports and summaries. Purpose and audience is a key element of our teaching as well as the Alan Peat sentence continuum, which we use to support our children with sentence structure and to ensure that they become engaging and interesting writers.
Alongside our novel based curriculum, Accelerated Reader is used to ensure our pupils are reading appropriate books that challenge and engage them. Our mission at North Mead Primary is to ensure that we create a generation of life long readers!
Book Led Immersive Curriculum
Writing at North Mead is an engaging and exciting subject in which children are exposed to a range of high quality novels, picture books and non-fiction texts. All English teaching across the school uses our bespoke book-based curriculum to ensure that our children have regular opportunities to read and write across a range of text types and to ensure that they are developing a rich and varied vocabulary. This incorporates a range of strategies that enable our children to see writing as a means of expression and communication.
Our approach to the teaching of English is underpinned by an engaging curriculum which allows children of all abilities to develop the skills to become confident speakers and then transfer these skills into becoming confident writers over time.
As they develop, children are encouraged to see writing as a powerful means of self – expression, a creative form of communication and to write for a range of purposes. Children in time develop the stamina and skills to write at length, with increasingly accurate spelling and punctuation.
We explore different types of writing, such as; narratives, explanations, persuasion, descriptions, comparisons, summaries and evaluations. We aim to make writing fun, purposeful and stimulating for our children.
The books for each year group are:
- Nursery – Spot goes to School, Colour Monster, I likes bees, I don’t like Honey, Old McDonald had a Farm, Wheels on the Bus, 5 Little Men, Humpty Dumpty, Wind the Bobbin Up, Twinkle Twinkl Little Star, Snowman, Dogger, Where’s my Teddy, Paper Dolls, Car Car Truck Jeep, The Runaway Train, Oliver’s Vegetables, The Runaway Pea, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Super Worm
- Reception– You Choose, Ruby’s Worry, Ravi’s Roar, The Body Book, Noah’s Ark, The Proudest Blue, Chapatti Moon, Oi Frog, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Gingerbread Man, Astro Girl, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Duck in a Truck, The Lion Inside, Very Important Animals, Oi Frog, Pattan’s Pumpkin and Handa’s Surprise
- Year 1 – The Gruffalo, Peepo!, Rama and Sita, George Saves the World by Lunchtime, Hassan and Aneesa and Stanley’s Stick
- Year 2 – The Darkest Dark, Chopsticks, Festivals and Celebrations, The Baker’s Boy, Found and Macbeth
- Year 3 – Stone Age Boy, Escape from Pompeii, Our House is on Fire, Boudicca’s Army, Hindu Stories and The Iron Man
- Year 4 – The Butterfly Lion, Richard III, Azzi In Between, The Great Kapok Tree, Vaisakhi and The First King of England
- Year 5 – The Chocolate Tree, Illegal, One Plastic Bag, Percy Jackson, The Good Samaritan and Stormbreaker
- Year 6 – War Horse, Windrush Child, Badger’s Parting Gifts, The Red Kingdom, Planet Omar and Seasons of Splendour
Spellings
We follow the national curriculum spelling rules. Below are the weekly spellings for Y1-Y6.
Handwriting
This year, Year 2- Year 6 will continue to learn continuous cursive handwriting – see above.
Reception and Year 1 will non-cursive handwriting – see below. This will then continue through the school and joined up handwriting will be introduced at the end of Year 1/beginning of Year 2.
Subject Policies/Plans
Subject Leader/s
Ms. M. Taylor