At Baddow Hall Infant School our vision is for every child to make the best possible progress.
Intent:
At Baddow Hall Infant School our English curriculum aims to ensure that children become lifelong learners through being able to read successfully and communicate their ideas and thoughts. We develop curiosity in children through exposing them to a wide range of high quality texts. Resilience is developed when learning to read and write and understand what written text means. We enable children to be creative through their responses to texts and when bringing their imagination to life.
EYFS framework (educational programme):
The development of children’s spoken language underpins all seven areas of learning and development. Children’s back-and-forth interactions from an early age form the foundations for language and cognitive development. The number and quality of the conversations they have with adults and peers throughout the day in a language-rich environment is crucial. By commenting on what children are interested in or doing, and echoing back what they say with new vocabulary added, practitioners will build children's language effectively. Reading frequently to children, and engaging them actively in stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems, and then providing them with extensive opportunities to use and embed new words in a range of contexts, will give children the opportunity to thrive. Through conversation, story-telling and role play, where children share their ideas with support and modelling from their teacher, and sensitive questioning that invites them to elaborate, children become comfortable using a rich range of vocabulary and language structures. It is crucial for children to develop a life-long love of reading. Reading consists of two dimensions: language comprehension and word reading. Language comprehension (necessary for both reading and writing) starts from birth. It only develops when adults talk with children about the world around them and the books (stories and non-fiction) they read with them, and enjoy rhymes, poems and songs together. Skilled word reading, taught later, involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words. Writing involves transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech, before writing)
National curriculum guidance (purpose of study):
English has a pre-eminent place in education and in society. A high-quality education in English will teach pupils to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them. Through reading in particular, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development. Reading also enables pupils both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know. All the skills of language are essential to participating fully as a member of society; pupils, therefore, who do not learn to speak, read and write fluently and confidently are effectively disenfranchised.
Reading
At Baddow Hall Infant School we teach the children to read through our daily phonics lessons, using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme. The children have access to fully and part decodable books to support their phonics teaching, as well as a wide range of other books in their classroom reading corners.
We strongly encourage parents to read regularly with their children in order to support them in developing their reading skills, so that they become lifelong enthusiastic readers. The comments made by parents in children's reading diaries provide teachers with valuable information about children's reading at home.
Through our Every Child Reads Scheme children will be motivated to read at home giving them the opportunity to reach the following awards: bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond and titanium.
