Our Intent

At Broad Chalke CE Primary School, we deliver a high-quality English curriculum that develops children’s skills and enjoyment in speaking, reading and writing. In keeping with our Church School values, we recognise that every child is unique and special. The overarching aim of English is to develop each child’s ability to communicate effectively through speech and writing and to listen and read with understanding across a wide range of purposes.

We aim to inspire a lifelong love of reading and an appreciation of high-quality texts. Our pupils engage with a diverse range of authors from different periods and backgrounds, ensuring access to a rich and relevant reading diet. Children are encouraged to read regularly at school and at home, selecting from the school library or reading scheme to develop both fluency and a passion for reading. We believe that enthusiastic readers become confident, creative writers who are ready to learn across the wider curriculum.

At Broad Chalke, children’s learning in reading, writing, grammar and punctuation is rooted in the ‘world of the book’. Immersing pupils in well-crafted, imaginative texts or writing stimuli inspires them to write creatively and effectively. Using quality texts as models helps children explore vocabulary, grammar and punctuation in context and apply these features in their own writing.

We place high importance on fostering pride in written work by promoting neat, legible handwriting and accurate spelling, grammar and punctuation. Pupils learn to adapt language and style for a range of contexts and purposes, producing writing that is clearly matched to audience, purpose and form.

Our Implementation

Phonics & Reading (also see our separate phonics tab)

Phonics is an enormous part of learning to read. From the moment that pupils join us in EYFS, they access daily, high-quality phonics sessions rooted in the validated systematic, synthetic phonics programme Unlocking Letters and Sounds. This provision continues through Year 1 and the autumn term of Year 2 to ensure that pupils have time to master phonics.

As part of the phonics scheme, it is recommended that you read the same book with your child at home multiple times throughout the week. This approach is rooted in research that says that children's reading fluency and word recognition improves every time they read the same book. Your child's class teacher will be able to answer any questions that you have about this.

Once children are confident with their word recognition and decoding skills, their reading lessons will shift to have a heavier comprehension (understanding) focus. This means that children will be challenged to explain what they've read and share their understanding of what a text means. In KS2, we engage children in reading aloud, using expression and developing their oracy skills and understanding of what they've read in an active manner. 

Spelling & Handwriting

Spelling and handwriting are both important transcription elements of the writing process. Through EYFS and Key Stage 1, pupils are taught spelling and handwriting as part of the Unlocking Letters and Sounds phonics programme. After this, pupils are taught spelling using a programme called ESSENTIALSpelling. ESSENTIALspelling is a whole class approach to teaching spelling that enables all children to succeed and gives teachers the unique tools to make that happen. From Year 2 upwards, the handwriting programme LetterJoin is used with pupils to encourage them to write in a neat, joined, accurate and legible style.

Working Walls

Working Walls are used in every classroom to support the children's learning in English. These walls contain current learning and equip the children to become more independent learners.