English Curriculum

Bowes Road, Dagenham, Essex, RM8 2XJ

office.st-teresa@bdcs.org.uk

02082704757

Speaking & Listening

The school policy is to offer the children a wide variety of opportunities to extend their vocabulary and their use of oral and written language. This is achieved in a wide variety of ways e.g. through role play, circle times, drama sessions, grammar and comprehension work. This will result in the development of increased confidence, self expression and expertise in English.

Reading

Our aim is to equip each child with the skills necessary to progress through the stages of reading to become competent, confident, independent readers with a love and respect for literature. Our reading books are organised into phonics levels, for early readers, and bands of reading difficulty. We have a well stocked and maintained school library. We have strong links with our local library too and encourage children and parents to make use of this valuable resource. We support reading through a regular, specific approach to guided reading in class.

Phonics

We follow the 'Read, Write Inc ' scheme to help ensure consistent and steady progress in the development of early reading skills. Our children make very good progress in their early development of letter sounds and blends, with 89% of pupils reaching the required standard in the Year 1 phonics check in 2018 (compared to a national average of 83%).

Writing

Children will be taught to writer for a wide range of purposes and audiences. They will be taught to organise and structure their writing in a variety of ways through fiction, poetry and other texts.

Handwriting

Handwriting is taught systematically throughout the school, during regular lessons. Once competent and confident writers in KS2 the children progress to using pens for writing.

Spelling

Spelling strategies are taught in daily reading and spelling workshops and children learn, and are tested, on a bank of words that they should spell correctly. They will be taught to use a dictionary and thesaurus when and where appropriate.

	Name	Format
Files

	Progression in Punctuation Overview 2223.docx.pdf	.pdf
	Writing Progression Milestones Map 2023.docx.pdf	.pdf
	RWI Phonics progression 2023.pdf	.pdf
	Phonics progression 2023.pdf	.pdf
	English Statement 202223.docx.pdf	.pdf

World Book Day 2023

We had the best day celebrating our favourite books and authors. The children and staff dressed up and enjoyed many activities throughout the day. The children really enjoyed the reading picnic where we partnered up with other classes and enjoyed taking turns both reading and listening to a range of stories.

Reading Bingo Challenge 2023

Congratulations to all the children that took part in our Reading Bingo Challenge over the last few weeks. Every class did extremely well but the class with the most entries was Year 5. The teachers have really enjoyed looking at all the photographs and videos you have sent in to Google Classroom as your evidence. You all did a fantastic job! Year 5 will enjoy a fun afternoon as their reward.

Young Shakespeare

The juniors of our school were lucky enough to have a visit performance from The a Young Shakespeare Company. They performed Romeo & Juliet, a very moving story many of the children were already familiar with. There was a lot of student participation which made for lots of excitement from the audience.