Halstead Community Primary School

Curriculum Intent

English is at the heart of all children’s learning. Literacy enables children both to communicate with others effectively for a variety of purposes and to examine their own and others’ experiences, feelings and ideas, giving these order and meaning. Literacy is central to children’s intellectual, emotional and social development as it has an essential role across the curriculum and helps pupils’ learning to be coherent and progressive.

We aim to encourage children to:

• be effective, competent communicators and good listeners;

• express opinions, articulate feelings and formulate responses to a range of texts both fiction, nonfiction

• using appropriate technical vocabulary;

• foster an interest in words and their meanings, and to develop a growing vocabulary in both

• spoken and written form;

• enjoy and engage with and understand a range of text types and genres;

• be able to write in a variety of styles and forms showing awareness of audience and purpose;

• develop powers of imagination, inventiveness and critical awareness in all areas of literacy;

• use grammar and punctuation accurately;

• understand spelling conventions;

• produce effective, well-presented written work.

By the time children leave our school, we expect them to communicate through speaking and listening, reading and writing with confidence, fluency and understanding and in a range of situations.

At Halstead Community Primary School, we use CUSP to deliver the national curriculum objectives in reading & writing. We have chosen CUSP because it is aspirational and allows our learners to be exposed to high quality texts in every year group. 

Cross-Curricular Literacy Opportunities

The skills that children are taught in Literacy underpin all other subjects.  They enable pupils to communicate and express themselves in all areas of their work.  Teachers will always make cross-curricular links wherever appropriate and will plan for pupils to apply the skills, knowledge and understanding that they have acquired during Literacy to other areas of the curriculum.

EYFS and Key Stage 1 classes daily enjoy and participate in whole class story time sessions. In key stage 2 children are read to everyday at the end of the day. Each class has a welcoming book corner which is regularly updated to suit the interests of the children and includes accessible books for all children to enjoy and read for pleasure. As part of the home/school agreement children are expected to read at home at least three times a week. We strongly encourage parents/carers to hear their child read unless they are at a level where the pupils can assess their own reading. Feedback on home reading is made by parents/carers or pupils within the Home Reading Records. In EYFS Guided Reading is linked to Little Wandle Letters and Sounds. This consists of three guided reading sessions at school using a book matched with the child’s current phonics level. Little Wandle books are then sent home for the children to continue practising with books at their level.

The three sessions are as follows:

• Decoding
• Prosody
• Comprehension

In KS1 Guided Reading is linked to Little Wandle Letters and Sounds. This consists of three guided reading sessions at school using a book matched with the child’s current phonics level. Little Wandle books are then sent home for the children to continue practising with books at their level.

The three sessions are as follows:

• Decoding
• Prosody
• Comprehension

KS1 deliver the Cusp reading and writing lessons throughout the week.

In KS2 guided reading sessions take place for 30 minutes each day using CUSP. These sessions are delivered as a whole class guided reading sessions and are taught five times a week. High quality texts are used which engage students and help them to explore a range of genres. Each year group has a set of core texts that cover a wide range of genres, authors, themes and experiences to ensure that all children have exposed a breadth of diverse literature throughout their school journey. Guided reading is taught in 2 week blocks and covers:

• summary
• Retrieval
• Understanding themes
• Prediction
• Inference
• Authorial intent