At St Nicholas Primary Academy English is at the heart of everything we do!  We know that children need to be able to listen to learn to speak, that they need to speak before they can understand what they read and that they need to be able to read before they can write!  Our aim therefore is to develop pupils’ knowledge and skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening.  We believe that such knowledge and skill is crucial to success across the curriculum, both in primary education and later life.

 

The study of English develops children’s ability to listen, speak, read and write for a wide range of purposes, including the communication of their ideas, views and feelings.  Children are enabled to express themselves creatively and imaginatively as they become enthusiastic and critical readers of stories, poetry and drama, as well as non-fiction and media texts.  Children gain an understanding of how language works by looking at its patterns, structures and origins.  Children use their knowledge, skills and understanding in speaking and writing across a range of different situations.

 

At St Nicholas Primary Academy, we strive for children to be a ‘Primary Literate Pupil’.

Our objectives in the teaching of English are for a child to be able to:

 

• Read and write with confidence, fluency and understanding, orchestrating a range of independent strategies to self-monitor and correct.
• Have an interest in books and read for enjoyment
• Have an interest in words and their meanings; developing a growing and rich vocabulary in spoken and written forms.
• Understand a range of text types and genres and be able to write in a variety of styles and forms appropriate to the situation.
• Be developing the powers of imagination, inventiveness and critical awareness. 
• Have a suitable technical vocabulary to articulate their responses.
• Have the skills to improve the planning, drafting and editing of their written work.
• Understand the grammatical terms and features used within a range of texts.
• Develop a range of strategies for spelling words that are polysyllabic; contain prefixes or suffixes and that are embedded within their composition of writing.

Everything we teach is underpinned by the current national curriculum and teachers carefully plan using this document to ensure that every child, during their life at our school, receive high quality lessons that help them to make progress and achieve their potential.