English

Reading lies at the heart of the curriculum at Owler Brook as we believe it is the key to unlocking the rest of the curriculum. Reading is essential for developing vocabulary, knowledge and understanding of the world, as well as speaking and listening. We develop a love of reading for our children from an early age, as we recognise the importance becoming lifelong readers has on children’s academic success. We aim for pupils to recognise the pleasure they can obtain from reading, as well as the opportunities texts can provide to gather new knowledge, revisit prior knowledge and understand more about what they learn in other curriculum areas. The curriculum guides staff in choosing texts which inspire and motivate pupils in their learning from a wide range of text types, genres and authors. Teaching demonstrates how to be an active reader and engage fully with the text, therefore improving understanding of what has been read and children’s comprehension skills. Children are given multiple opportunities to engage with reading- based activities throughout the school day.

At Owler Brook, our children are engaged in authentic writing opportunities that are linked to a purposeful written outcome. We aim to promote a love of Writing, through making our Writing experiences purposeful and meaningful to the children we teach. We use National Curriculum guidance to ensure pitch and expectation is correct for the age or stage that the child is working at. We aim to ensure that children have appropriate support and challenge in all writing that they do, not just within the literacy lesson, but also across the curriculum. Throughout our school, we aim to give our children the tools they need to write effectively as well as inspiring them to develop a love of writing. This is done through providing them with quality stimuli (often based on texts) that are engaging and give writing purpose. We then teach the punctuation and grammar that supports the style of writing to develop the children’s technical writing ability. This is carefully mapped out to ensure each year group can build on the skills taught previously. We then publish and celebrate our writing in a range of ways that gives the writing purpose, enables pupils to share their work with a wider audience, as well adding excitement and a sense of achievement.
Due to the high levels of EAL learners attending Owler Brook, our approach to writing is centred on talk. We believe that talk is vital to help children express themselves in writing and to ensure that cognitive load (the amount of information that the brain is capable of managing) is limited. Speaking and listening opportunities are a significant focus in the Immersion stage of our Writing Sequence. It is paramount that our children are given time to listen to spoken words, then to practise speaking English and understanding English through listening to others in a variety of contexts. We want to enable children to use language to learn and communicate ideas, as well as express their views and feelings across a range of different situations. The quality and variety of language that children hear and speak are vital for developing their vocabulary and grammar and their understanding for reading and writing.

Writing at Owler Brook follows our own structured Writing curriculum which provides experience, language and skills children need to produce their own high quality writing. Latterly in the Writing sequence, children acquire the important skills to edit, review and improve what they have done where appropriate. The teaching at Owler Brook utilises a pathway of progression as children advance through the primary curriculum. This builds upon prior text type knowledge and application of punctuation and grammar skills. A wide variety of texts fuel children’s imagination in their own writing, as well as exposing our children to a vast range of vocabulary so that they able to decipher new words and then use these in their own spoken and written language.
Staff create a culture where children take pride in their writing through their presentation, handwriting and quality of text.