At Howitt Primary Community School, we recognise the fundamental role that the good quality teaching of English plays in a child being successful in the future. The high-quality teaching of English is a key priority for us as a school and our cross-curricular curriculum ensures that English is embedded across all subjects.  

Our teaching of English is broken down into 4 key areas, which are:

• Spoken language
• Reading 
• Writing
• Spelling, punctuation and grammar

Aims

The teaching of English plays a key role in our school aims.

• As a school we ensure that English is taught within a broad and balanced curriculum and the children have regular opportunities to practise their skills in the foundation subjects.
• Our English is predominantly text based and we choose high quality texts which appeal to the children in our school and link to our topics/themes. For more information on our book choices across the school visit our long- term plans https://www.howittprimary.org.uk/our-learning/
• We regularly discuss our text choices with the children and encourage the children to share their views.
• Across the school, English is taught within our safe, positive and nurturing environment to enable our pupils to become confident when communicating their ideas, whether it is through spoken language or written work.
• We aim to promote a love of learning English through a language rich environment, which displays and values the children’s work and reflects key, high quality vocabulary.
• We also promote a love of reading through regular reading of carefully chosen class texts, a wide range of the high-quality books for the children to choose from and book areas, which are continually developing.
• We work hard as a school to promote independence in English for all groups of children, through a carefully planned differentiated approach.
• We encourage children to be creative in their writing and we regularly celebrate writing in our school, for example in our Key Stage assemblies or in the ‘Star of the Week Book’.
• We recognise the key role that our partnership with parents plays to develop the English skills of our pupils. We develop this through parent workshops and guidance in their reading record books. Parents are given regular information about what we are learning in class through the class newsletters.
• We have a class reward system in place that promotes reading at home. Our pupils are invited to choose a book from Mrs Pilling’s office once they have read 100 times at home.

The Learning Environment

Our school environment reflects the fact that we value books and texts of all kinds. We promote English as a tool for learning, and aim to develop children’s pleasure in reading, writing and a love of books.

Each class has: A learning journey display that celebrates our themed topic approach. A reading strategies display – VIPERS. A well-organised and welcoming book area, containing a range of scheme books, fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Displays of non-fiction books related to the current topics being explored. Other age appropriate areas in the classroom, e.g. writing tables (indoor and outdoor) and role play areas. Displays across the curriculum which celebrate achievement in English and promote good quality communication of learning. Displays which inform and provide a vocabulary resource. Our school library is also used to promote the love of reading.

SEND and differentiation

We identify pupils with difficulties in acquiring English skills as early as possible in order to ensure that their self-esteem is not adversely affected. We recognise that pupils learn at differing paces and we place particular emphasis on ensuring skills are developed within a framework that is meaningful for individual pupils. The development of English skills is set as high priority for pupils with particular needs, in order to support their access to the full curriculum.

Support for these pupils is provided within groups, or on a one to one basis with a Teaching and Learning Assistant (TLA). TLAs support learning with direction from Mrs Edgeley (SENCo), class teacher and senior leadership. A range of interventions to support learning in English are offered:

• Lexia
• Talk Boost
• Switch-on Reading
• Additional phonics input
• Targeted speech and language work
• Personalised programs
• Fine motor support
• ECAM
• ECAT 

Please speak to your child's class teacher if you have any concerns about your child's learning in English.