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English at Buckingham Park Primary School
Reading, writing, speaking and listening are life skills. It is through language that we explore, organise and make sense of our experiences. The way children understand and use language is crucial to their social and academic development and will affect all aspects of their life at home, school and in the wider world - no other area is as truly cross-curricular as language.
With this in mind, English is developed through reading, writing, speaking and listening, both across the curriculum and as a subject in its own right, ensuring there is opportunity to demonstrate high level literacy across all subjects.
Our aim is to produce experienced and confident communicators; children who are able to sensitively select the most appropriate and effective means of communication from a wide variety of knowledge, skills, styles and techniques.
Our teaching will enable the children to:
- Read and write with confidence, fluency and understanding, orchestrating a range of independent strategies to self-monitor and correct;
- Have an interest in books and read for enjoyment;
- Have an interest in words, their meanings; developing a growing vocabulary in spoken and written forms;
- Understand a range of text types and genres, and be able to write in a variety of styles and forms appropriate to the situation;
- Develop the powers of imagination, inventiveness and critical awareness;
- Have a suitable technical vocabulary to articulate their responses.
Writing
We take great care to select high quality books to inspire and enthuse children to write in each unit of work. This means that children have a wide range of author's writing to draw upon when composing their own work. We use a balance of classic and contemporary authors and each half term the children will study three or more books in depth in both reading and writing lessons. In each writing unit, the children are given the opportunity to write several smaller outcomes, which culminates in a more sustained outcome. Children's engagement is maintained throughout a unit of work through opportunities for stunning starts, role play, purposeful writing with an audience in mind, visits and visitors, using our school environment and visual media such film clips.

Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar
Spelling, punctuation and grammar are an integral part of our English and wider curriculum. Teaching is integrated into teaching sequences for writing and discrete lessons are also delivered. At Buckingham Park we use the The No Nonsense Spelling Programme which offers a comprehensive yet accessible progression in the teaching of spelling.
The focus of the programme is on the teaching of spelling, which embraces knowledge of spell- ing conventions – patterns and rules; but integral to the teaching is the opportunity to promote the learning of spellings, including statutory words, common exceptions and personal spellings.
Children's phonological awareness and spelling strategies are reguarly assessed and this informs teaching. Dedicated time is allocated for teaching and investigating spellings which are based on the spelling guidelines and lists in the Primary English National Curriculum appendices. Children are encouraged to practise their spellings as homework and are given tasks to support their learning in class. Children are taught spelling rules discretely. Word banks, along with dictionaries, are used to support children's spelling at the point of writing.
The teaching of grammar is embedded into our teaching of writing, and through studying the use of grammar in the books we use. Occasionally, if a gap in grammatic learning is identified we might teach that discretely, however it is more effective to teach through examples in real books.
Grammar Glossary from National Curriculum
Spelling information from National Curriculum
Spelling activities linked to the National Curriculum http://www.spellingframe.co.uk

Handwriting
Handwriting is a basic skill that influences the quality of work throughout the curriculum. By the end of Key Stage 2 all pupils should have the ability to produce fluent, legible and, eventually, speedy joined-up handwriting, and to understand the different forms of handwriting used for different purposes.
Our intention is to make handwriting an automatic process that does not interfere with creative and mental thinking.
Aims:
- To develop a neat, legible, speedy handwriting style using continuous cursive letters, which leads to producing letters and words automatically in independent writing.
- To establish and maintain high expectations for the presentation of written work.
- For pupils to understand, by the end of Year 6, the importance of neat presentation and the need for different letterforms (cursive, printed or capital letters) to help communicate meaning clearly.
To find our how to form and join letters click on the Letter Join image below. If your child is at school you can ask us for the password to fully access the site.
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