English

Curriculum Intent 

Through our journey at saffron green, children become confident, aspirational and enthusiastic learners. We aim to provide a broad and rich curriculum which accelerates progress. Our intent is that all children become attentive listeners and confident speakers to enable them to flourish in all stages of their lives.

Reading 

Through a rich, exciting and engaging curriculum we aim to develop confident, independent and fluent readers. Our use of age appropriate, high quality texts ensures that children have a well sequenced reading journey through each subject. A rich and varied literacy heritage creates a broadening cultural capital in all our children. We have a strong foundation that promotes early reading in systematic synthetic phonics which allows our children to become passionate free readers.

Writing 

At Saffron Green our intent is for children to be provided with the skills that allow them to become imaginative and innovative writers. Through exposer to a wide and enriching vocabulary children gain the ability to write clearly, accurately and coherently. We work hard to support and encourage our children to independently evaluate, edit and improve their writing. We value the importance of writing in all areas of the curriculum this enables children to write appropriately, structured texts for a wide range of audiences and context. We believe by developing high quality presentation and handwriting, children take pride in all they write.

Speaking and Listening 

We recognise speaking and listening is integral in every part of life. This journey begins in our EYFS where there is a broad range of approaches through exploratory play, imaginative dialogue and storytelling. In creating a safe and secure environment our children are able to communicate effectively with the world around them. Our intent is to provide children the skills to have constructive, confident peer discussion and debates. Our learning environments are rich in talk and promote critical thinking for all.

Curriculum Implementation

Reading

EYFS and Year 1

We follow the Read Write Inc. (RWI) programme to teach our children phonics. Teaching assistants and teachers are trained to deliver this programme 4 days a week. We divide Reception, Year 1 and children still accessing the programme into groups based on their reading levels and follow a RWI plan.

Read Write Inc. Phonics includes reading books written using only the letters they have learnt at each level (and a small number of separately taught tricky words). The children will quickly feel confident and successful. In order to consolidate their learning the children take their reading phonic book home and in addition to this they also take home a carefully matched book to practice the skills taught in class.

Teachers assess their children’s phonics ability half termly. For those children who have gaps in their phonic knowledge, we have a dedicated teaching assistants who takes small groups in order to reinforce missing sounds. We also use regular assessment for learning opportunities to reassess those children making accelerated progress.

Year 2 and KS2

Children continue with the RWI programme until they have passed grey level, this will be in year 2 during term one if the children is at an expected level. However, some children will continue this journey into key stage 2.

Guided reading is taught from Year 2 to Year 6. Guided reading follows a cycle of lessons each day, focusing on a different activity to develop children’s fluency and comprehension skills this will include echo reading, text marking, written comprehension, group discussion and class novels.

Teachers use carefully selected age related texts at the end of each term to assess against the Herts for Learning reading teacher assessment framework.

At Saffron Green children are provided with the opportunity to change their book weekly. Each week children are heard by an adult. They are presented with many chances to read throughout the day which can include independent reading time, guided reading, reading a range of texts during curriculum lesson.

Click here for more information about Read Write Inc Phonics.

Writing

We teach writing across all year groups so and is threaded through all elements of our curriculum. We have created an individualised curriculum map that provide all children with access to age related skills and knowledge contained in the National Curriculum. We follow a clear teaching sequence for writing throughout the school. We teach children a range of strategies to organise their writing, which involves story maps, scaffolding, success criteria and word banks. The writing process is modelled through carefully selected units of work and high quality text with a focus on varied vocabulary. We believe it important to expose to rich vocabulary through class novels, working walls and word walls.

We use No Nonsense Spelling from year 2 through to keys stage 2. The programme offers a range of planning approaches which follow a sequence that consists of review, teach, practise and apply. Children are given spellings to learn each week and are given a spelling test the following week.

Handwriting is not only taught discretely, it is an integral part to any lesson and is reinforced daily.  Children are expected to use joined, legible handwriting and take pride in their presentation throughout all areas of the curriculum.

Impact

Children will have a love of reading and use this to broaden their knowledge and imagination. They will develop the skills to read with confidence fluency and expression.

Children will become confident speakers able to debate, discuss, perform and present with clarify and understanding.

Children will be able to use their skills and exposure to enriching vocabulary to produce creative and engaging writing pieces across all areas of the curriculum. Children will apply their knowledge and understanding of spelling rules and independently embed these in their writing.