English

Vision

Throughout the Federation, our vision is that English ignites a spark in every child.

“It is our children’s right...and their best hope for the future.” Michael Morpurgo

A passion for writing

A love for reading

An understanding of language

In the world that our children are growing up in, there are endless possibilities. At their finger-tips, opportunities await. To access and make the most of these chances, our children need strong communication skills in all forms: spoken, read or performed, composed, written or typed.

William Shakespeare believed that ‘writing and reading comes by nature’. At Wroughton Primary Federation, we agree and therefore strive to provide each child with the platform to not only gain a wealth of knowledge, but also develop a love for the English language.

When speaking and listening, we want our children to have freedom to play with performance, discuss passionately and be able to order and organise their thoughts into conversation.

When Reading, be that alone or together, we encourage our children to imagine, experience the impossible and most of all learn. Reading widely and often, both for pleasure and information, develops many fundamental skills that can help propel progress in all areas of English.

A wide range of vocabulary and grammatical structures can be accessed, different audiences and purposes can be experienced and complicated life issues can be explored. We know a reader, even at the age of 5, becomes familiar with writers’ techniques without even realising it!

For example:

The repetition creates structure and builds suspense... Exclamation marks change how I read it... This story makes me think even I could go on a bear hunt!

When writing, we enable our children to explore structure, experiment with language and apply their understanding of taught techniques. Michael Morporgo claims that ‘To be a writer, you need to drink in the world around you so it’s always there in your head.’ As teachers, we work hard to create experiences that provide opportunities for writing - maybe a Roman march through the school grounds or a search for sea shells in the sand pit. Our children have been known to even witness a rocket crash in the Tree Area.

No idea is too big or too small. However, we encourage our children to be resilient: it is very rare that something is right the first time. Therefore, editing is vital; we work hard to teach how to check and improve writing. This is a tricky task for children, but with our editing pencil we can do it!