English

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“Everyone is a reader... some just haven't found their favourite book yet.”

At Castle Hill, we aim to provide an English curriculum which inspires a love of communication and language. We believe that through reading, writing and the spoken language, all pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Reading enables pupils to acquire knowledge and to build upon what they already know; writing and the spoken language allow them to communicate confidently and effectively with a range of audiences. At Castle Hill, we value reading, writing and the spoken language as key life skills and are dedicated to enabling our pupils to become lifelong readers and communicators. We believe literacy is the bedrock of success in education.

We aspire for our children to be able to:

read fluently and with good understanding.
develop the habit of reading widely and often, both for pleasure and information.
acquire a rich vocabulary.
understand grammar and linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language.
appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage.
write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.
use oracy in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas.
make important links between subjects, to deepen and explore their understanding of other curriculum areas.
respond to texts in a variety of ways.
be prepared for success at secondary level and beyond.

Our curriculum is carefully sequenced to ensure that core content is taught and revisited over time so that pupils commit their understanding to their long-term memory to master reading and writing.

What does Reading for Pleasure look like at Castle Hill?

Our Reading Environments

In each classroom there is an inviting reading area consisting of high quality texts for the children to choose from. Books are easily accessible for the children to immerse themselves into books of their own choosing. All children are entitled to take a ‘reading for pleasure’ book home.

Reading for Pleasure is a key driver at our school and all teachers are responsible for promoting this. Every week, we celebrate children’s achievements in reading through our whole school Celebration Assembly. Teachers look out for children who are consistently showing engagement, effort and resilience in their reading. Every child who is nominated as ‘Reader of the Week’ gets the chance to potentially win a book from our vending machine!

On days such as World Book Day we set aside the timetable and really celebrate books.

Learning Knights

We want children and staff to support each other when reading and writing. Our learning knights are used to promote positive behaviours within the classrooms and across the school. Each knight has a bespoke characteristic that is used to support children with their learning.

Early Reading

Throughout the week children in EYFS and KS1 participate in a discrete daily structured phonics lesson. The scheme we use at Castle Hill is ‘Fishing for Phonics.’

Each day, after the phonics lesson, the children will apply the phonics skills just learnt or previously learnt to read a decodable book. The children are encouraged to sit with the book in-between both children, taking turns reading each page. They read this book everyday at school and are encouraged to read it at home too for the whole week. This will help the children to develop reading fluency.