Bishop Chavasse Church of England School Policies are all underpinned by respect and our school parable 'The Wise and the Foolish Builder', which forms the basis of our whole school vision, highlighting the importance of wisdom, compassion and honesty.
Bishop Chavasse School values every wonderfully and uniquely created child and adult; inspiring everyone to fulfil their potential, as we achieve excellence together. As Jesus teaches through the parable of the house on the rock: we grow in wisdom, supported by the compassion of God to establish firm, honest foundations on which every child can build.
At Bishop Chavasse CE Primary School, we believe a firm foundation of the skills taught in English underpins children’s ability to access the whole curriculum. English is an integrated and fundamental component of the whole primary curriculum. Our understanding of English incorporates speaking, listening, reading and writing. We believe that English plays an integral role in personal and social development and to life-long learning. Good communication skills equip us to be confident individuals, successful learners and courageous advocates. Communication allows children to demonstrate their ability to be honest, compassionate and wise members of the community in which they live.
Through exposing and immersing children in a diverse, inclusive and rich texts, experiences and multi-media opportunities, we aim to foster a curiosity, creativity and passion for reading, writing and expressing themselves as young individuals. The curriculum is designed to develop knowledge and skills that are progressive, as well as transferable, throughout their time at Bishop Chavasse CE Primary School and also to their further education and beyond.
Our broad, knowledge rich and well sequenced curriculum develops from the careful selection and use of high-quality texts with challenging, inspiring and high-level vocabulary. From these, teachers carefully sequence series of lessons that enable the children to express themselves as confident individuals and successful learners, through a variety of activities and genres.
Speaking and listening is the foundation to successful communication and underpins a pupil’s ability to express themselves in writing. Through studying a range of rich texts, we aim to develop and inspire curiosity in the children and encourage depth of thought, discussion and a confidence to express their opinions and ideas. Through our English lessons, we encourage children to question and be questioned. In addition, English is the perfect platform for role play, hot seating and performing playscripts or poems enabling them to demonstrate themselves as confident individuals.
Reading exposes the children to a range of age appropriate and exciting fiction and non-fiction texts. These carefully selected texts aim to develop the children's vocabulary and passion for reading. Throughout the week, the children use the text to demonstrate a range of reading skills including reader’s theatre, comprehension strategies including: recalling, predicting, summarising and answering literal and inferential questions.
In each year group, the teachers carefully select a book to capture the children's imagination. Bringing the whole class together for this shared reading experience fosters a love for reading as well as opportunities to model how to read aloud using intonation and character voices. This starts as soon as the children enter our school in EYFS all the way up to Year 6. Reading for pleasure is imperative for growing children who have a love for reading and understand the importance of English in realising their hopes and aspirations for now and the future.
Through our English lessons and our foundation subjects, the children will also experience, carefully selected, rich and varied texts which challenge the children and extend their vocabulary. These provide the children with well-structured sentences and plots that they can use to support their writing.
Writing is taught through studying rich texts from the Power of Reading scheme of learning and identifying the author’s style. The children can then use the ideas from these quality texts and, through shared writing and modelling, emulate these techniques in their own pieces. Teachers demonstrate good writing practice to the children whilst using their creative and imaginative ideas. We ensure the writing modelled shows the high expectations that are expected and features the success criteria and indicates the purpose and audience of the writing. Children will learn to write using a range of writing genres, both fiction and non-fiction.
Spelling, vocabulary, grammar and punctuation is taught as a discrete area and is also integrated throughout all of the children's learning and focused on through the editing process. We ensure that there are opportunities for the children to experience rich quality texts that expose them to examples of powerful vocabulary, accurate grammar and high-level punctuation.
At Bishop Chavasse, we ensure a high standard of presentation of written work which helps to raise standards. We have a consistent approach across EYFS and Key Stage 1 and 2, leading to fully cursive writing. It enables children to develop legible handwriting that is produced quickly and with automaticity. With the development of automaticity, handwriting becomes a valuable tool and not a hindrance to learning. The skills they learn through discrete handwriting lessons will be transferrable across the curriculum, taking pride in their presentation in other subjects and not solely in their English lessons.
Outcomes in English lessons, evidence a broad and balanced curriculum demonstrating children to be confidently literate. English supports children to succeed in many other subjects. Being an avid reader and having an in depth comprehension allows children to access their learning across the curriculum. This is particularly applicable to subjects like geography and history where there are benefits to reading around a topic. Our English curriculum ensures that children read widely, acquire a wide vocabulary, have an understanding of grammar and are able to write clearly and legibly. We provide exciting cultural capital that is engaging, authentic, vocabulary rich, aspirational, cross-curricular and inspiring. We deliver a reading and writing curriculum that is broad, balanced and challenging. Our pedagogy embraces oracy, diverse writing opportunities and drama.
The impact of our English curriculum is measured through the monitoring cycle in school; lesson observation, book monitoring and learning walks undertaken by the English coordinator and a member of the senior leadership team. Progression will be evident when undertaking book monitoring. Gathering pupil voice will check understanding of key skills and knowledge, progression and the confidence in discussing the children’s learning in English. Through the use of moderating within our school, across the trust and other schools will ensure accurate assessments are made. As a school, we track pupils’ progress each term in reading and writing. Our continuous assessment informs planning and intervention required. Monitoring is an ongoing cycle, which is used productively to provide the best possible English curriculum for our children at Bishop Chavasse and to ensure it is inclusive to all.
Our English curriculum is designed to make a long-term impact, supporting children to become confident in the art of speaking and listening, fluent, passionate readers, enjoy writing across a range of genres using effective vocabulary, supporting them to make good or better progress from their starting points to achieve their full potential to become successful learners. Our English curriculum will enable the children to leave primary school with high aspirations for their future, gaining opportunities to succeed beyond their time at Bishop Chavasse Primary School.