English
At the core of our English Curriculum at Whitstable Junior School is the belief that we need to teach our children to grow up to have a love of reading, writing and language, to be confident and competent writers and to have all the building blocks firmly in place to be able to access the written word in all forms both throughout the remainder of their education and into their life as adults. We have carefully crafted our curriculum to include a broad and diverse range of texts, delivered in all subjects, enabling children to be fully immersed in the world of literature. We encourage daily reading and writing and teach children the importance of taking pride in their work, writing for purpose and publishing. Additionally, children develop their confidence and manipulation of spoken word through partner work, class discussion and performance.
Enabling all children to be successful and overcome their own individual barriers is essential to us at WJS and so progression within our English curriculum has been carefully mapped. Although our chosen high-quality texts are broadly related to themes across the curriculum (encouraging full immersion in a subject), they are all carefully chosen to be age and interest appropriate and always of quality. Our curriculums are balanced and sequential, cycling round to allow children to build on their learning year by year, developing their skills to ultimately become readers and writers for life.
Both reading and writing underpin all the other areas of the curriculum and, as such, we make it a priority to identify gaps and support pupils from the moment they start in year 3 to their leaving in year 6. We firmly believe that masterful readers become excellent writers therefore the teaching of reading is a key focus in all of our classrooms. Children develop their understanding and skills within each key area of reading through our English sessions, Book Talk and Phonics intervention (using the Read Write Inc scheme).
To support the children as they mature, a selection of increasingly complex literature has been carefully chosen as the children move through the school. The books we read with the children develop their comprehension and fluency in reading as well as feeding into their knowledge of a wide vocabulary from which they can draw. We have embedded the use of Vocabulary Ninja to support this in class using near synonyms and words banks to increase their personal lexicon.
Throughout the school and in all areas of the curriculum, children at WJS are exposed to a wide range of high-quality texts whether they have been selected by teachers, taken from our class libraries, our extensive school library or from visiting the Whitstable Town Library which is conveniently located just next door. We aim to visit with each class a few times a year and encourage all children to get their own library card.
To support writing, all children are given frequent opportunities to write at length in a range of subjects. Grammar skills are practiced discreetly and then embedded into longer pieces of written work and taught progressively through the school.
Legible, neat work is essential for quality writing and so handwriting is taught progressively through the school. All children are expected to use a neat, cursive style in their books and children who require extra support with this are given intervention and support in class using the Letterjoin programme. When children have shown consistently neat and even handwriting they may be given a pen to use
