English
Spoken Language
Our approach to oracy permeates the whole curriculum. We use talk routines throughout the school, such as children working with talk partners to develop their ideas. Interactive teaching strategies are used to engage all pupils and develop their spoken language in order to raise reading and writing standards. We want children to develop effective communication skills in readiness for later life.
Vocabulary
Our curriculum identifies the words we want children to learn. In EYFS and KS1 we teach much of the new vocabulary through the high quality texts of our English curriculum. We explicitly teach new words on a daily basis in KS2 and we have carefully mapped the technical vocabulary children will need in all subjects for every age group. All classrooms display vocabulary and new words are revisited regularly.
Reading
Children begin their reading journey from the moment they start school at Wellsprings. A highlight of every day, in every classroom, is storytime, when we immerse ourselves in exciting stories and encourage children to develop a love of reading. Daily discrete phonics lessons in EYFS and KS1 enable children to decode efficiently and develop into fluent readers. Phonics lessons continue into KS2 where necessary. We use Read, Write Inc as our phonics approach across the school. Once children can read fluently, reading lessons continue across KS2 where children read interesting and inspiring texts that aim to promote independent reading beyond the lesson.
We have recently received nearly 3000 new phonics books, and provision doesn’t end there as you will find cosy book nooks in every class and in quiet places across the school that will tempt every reader. We encourage pupil leadership in reading and many of our Year 5/6 children volunteer as Reading Ambassadors supporting individual readers in KS1 after their lunchtime. They also work hard to keep our book nooks inviting and updated, and offer recommendations of great reads to other pupils throughout the school.
Each year our whole school focused Book Week coincides with World Book Day. Over the years the theme has included non-fiction, maths and poetry themes all with a stimulating assembly at the beginning of the week, a dressing up day linked to a theme and a ‘sharing assembly’ on the Friday. 2024 Book Week ‘Traditional Tales from Around the World’ saw us develop our intercultural understanding by reading tales from around the globe and appreciating the history and culture of fairy tales in general. Parents and carers attended three stay-and-read sessions throughout the week in our atmospheric Cinderella story gazebo.
Writing
We aim to develop the children’s ability to produce well structured, detailed writing in which the meaning is made clear and which engages the interest of the reader. Our writing curriculum is based on high quality texts and ensures progression and continuity across the key stages. Attention is paid throughout the school to the formal structures of English, grammatical detail, punctuation and spelling.
Our handwriting policy starts as children commence their RWI journey. They learn a memorable rhyme for each letter and work on developing 'perfect pencil grip'. We continue handwriting practice throughout KS1 and KS2.
Whole school projects (Science Week, Health week, History Week and Book week) are all used to inspire our children to write for a purpose.
Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling are taught as part of every English unit and celebrated in our new KS2 Spelling Bee competition!
Poetry
At Wellsprings, we learn a poem-by-heart every half term from Year 1 to Year 6 so that every child will learn at least 36 poems by the end of Year 6.
Arts Week 2023 was linked to poetry. Henri Rousseau’s ‘Surprised!’ painting was the focus study for the week, but we used it as an opportunity to link it to the poem, ‘That Stormy Night’ by Berlie Doherty. Berlie even led an assembly (virtually) to talk to the children about how to become better writers. Better still, Berlie read her poem aloud to the whole school!
We had a competition to help raise the profile of children’s handwriting skills. Children submitted their best handwritten version of the poem, and we awarded some class winners. See below some of the wonderful examples of handwriting.