“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” Colossians 4:6  

English Intent Statement

At Our Lady of Lourdes School we believe that a high quality education in English goes a long way in enabling our children to ‘live life to the full’. An effective English curriculum, enables our children to speak, read and write fluently so that a two way process of communication can take place. It allows children to express themselves to others and to gain an understanding of the wonderful world in which we live.

At Our Lady of Lourdes School, we place a strong emphasis on reading, particularly reading for pleasure. However, we want our children to understand that reading can help them to acquire knowledge and build upon the things they already know. Reading can also help our children to understand their own identity, develop empathy with others and it provides a link to the wider community.

We believe that all the skills of taught within the English curriculum are essential to participating fully as a member of society.

Our progression documents in reading and writing can be accessed below.

The teaching of phonics

This academic year, we are building on our excellent teaching of phonics by implementing the ‘Twinkl’ Phonics scheme.

‘Twinkl’ phonics is a systematic, synthetic phonics programme, which has been approved by the DfE. It has a clear, structured progression, with engaging learning resources. Skills are built progressively over time, ensuring that children have a secure base from which to develop.

During phonics lessons, the children will repeat elements from the four cornerstones of phonics to ensure that they have rapid and automatic recall of GPCs and tricky/common exception words. Each day they will experience blending and segmenting activities to allow regular practise of these core skills.

Children in EYFS, Year 1 and Year 2 classes are taught specific sounds daily, with some targeted support for individual pupils by the class teacher or teaching assistant. Our children are given many opportunities to deepen their understanding and apply their phonics knowledge throughout the school day. During the summer term in Year 1, children take a phonics screening test which assesses their ability to apply what they have learnt. Children who struggle with their phonics screening test will continue to access support through intervention to acquire these key skills. 

Here is some of the technical vocabulary we use during phonics teaching:

Decoding - To translate printed words to sounds or words for reading

Blend(ing) - to draw individual sounds together to pronounce a word, e.g. d-r-o-p (drop)

Segment(ing)- to split up a word into its individual phonemes in order to spell it.

Phoneme - Smallest unit of speech sounds sh/i/p 

Grapheme - Written representation of the sounds

CVC - Consonant - Vowel - Consonant (dog)

CCVC - Consonant - Consonant - Vowel - Consonant (pram)

Encoding - Using individual sounds to build words for spelling. 

Suffix(es) - a unit of letters such as 'ed' 'ing' that are added to a word to change its meaning e.g. play'ed'