English

School Mission and Curriculum Vision

At St Patrick’s Catholic Primary School, our English curriculum is deeply rooted in our mission statement: “Sharing Our Faith, Inspiring Education and Achieving Our Dreams”. Guided by this we believe that language, communication, and literacy are fundamental gifts that allow children to express their unique, God-given identities, empathize with others, and interact meaningfully with the wider world.

We believe the exposure of well-chosen, high-quality children’s literature within the primary school setting is vital as a rich context for learning; not only within English as a subject but to support building a reading culture throughout the school and to develop a literacy-rich environment. Our vision is for excellence in literacy through an ambitious English Curriculum that places books at its core. By placing books at the core, teachers use high-quality texts as the context to deliver the requirements of the National Curriculum, fostering an enduring love of reading and writing while igniting creativity.

Through this policy, we ensure that every child—regardless of background, ability, or additional needs—is given the tools to become a fluent communicator, a critical reader, and an expressive writer.

Statutory Framework and National Curriculum Strands

This policy aligns fully with the statutory National Curriculum Programme of Study for English (Key Stages 1 and 2) and the “Communication and Language” and “Literacy” specific areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Statutory Framework.

The curriculum is structured around the text-rich, spiral model provided by Literacy Tree, ensuring that key reading and writing objectives are built using a layered approach where skills are regularly consolidated and applied with increasing complexity.

The framework systematically covers:

• Spoken Language: Developing oral fluency, debate, drama, and philosophical enquiry using the complex issues raised within our core texts.
• Reading (Word Reading & Comprehension): Moving from systemic synthetic phonics to critical reading, vocabulary analysis, and text-based critique.
• Writing (Transcription & Composition): Progressing from basic letter formation and spelling patterns to writing fluently for an array of audiences, purposes, and authentic contexts.
• Vocabulary, Grammar, and Punctuation (VGP): Explicitly embedding grammatical mechanics within the purposeful context of the text rather than as isolated exercises.

Early Reading and Systemic Synthetic Phonics: Read Write Inc. (RWI)

To ensure that every child learns to read quickly, fluently, and accurately, St Patrick’s implements the Read Write Inc. (RWI) Phonics programme as our validated Systemic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) framework from EYFS through to early Key Stage 1.

Implementation of Phonics:

• Daily Targeted Streaming: Phonics is taught daily for 45 minutes. Children are assessed every six weeks by the Reading Leader and dynamically grouped across EYFS and KS1 to ensure they receive instruction perfectly matched to their current phonic stage.
• Pure Sounds and Blending: Children are taught to read letters or groups of letters (graphemes) by saying the pure sounds (phonemes) and blending them together (“Fred Talk”) to read words.
• Decodable Reading Books: The books children read in school and take home are strictly matched to their phonic knowledge. This builds absolute confidence, eliminates guessing, and fosters immediate success.
• Phonics Screening Check (PSC): In Year 1, children take the statutory National Phonics Screening Check. Any pupil who does not meet the expected standard receives immediate, targeted RWI one-to-one tutoring daily and retakes the check in Year 2.

Transition to Reading Comprehension

Once children complete the RWI Phonics programme (having mastered decoding, high-frequency “red words,” and achieving fluent reading speeds), they transition seamlessly onto the Literacy Tree Reading Circles or text-based comprehension pathways, bridging the gap between decoding words and evaluating deep textual meaning.

The Writing Framework: Literacy Tree “Writing Roots”

Our whole-school approach to the teaching of writing through Literacy Tree Writing Roots ensures rigour and consistency where children are appropriately challenged and supported to build core and lasting literacy skills.

The Writing Process and Pedagogy:

• Purpose and Audience: Purpose and audience underpin decisions about the form any writing should take, such as a narrative, an explanation, or a description. Children have real reasons to write, whether to explain, persuade, inform, or instruct.
• Writing in Role and Genre: Writing opportunities are meaningful and allow children to write in role across a wide range of genres, construct critiques of texts, and form sophisticated cross-textual comparisons.
• The Active Working Wall: Teachers model essential skills—including planning, drafting, writing, revising, and editing—using physical resources like flip-charts, sentence strips, and live writing models. The classroom “Working Wall” serves as an active, unfolding map of the text’s learning journey.
• Revising and Editing: Children are encouraged to revise and edit their writing as an ordinary, vital part of the writing process, making editing an integral habit within the Literacy Tree curriculum.

Intended Outcomes and Impact:

• Children develop a profound love of reading and writing, viewing themselves as confident, competent writers.
• Every child writes well and fluently, with the ability to communicate meaning effectively for a range of purposes and audiences.
• Children speak confidently to a range of audiences and for a variety of purposes, and they listen effectively.
• The percentage of children working at Age-Related Expectations (ARE) and Greater Depth (GDS) within each year group meets or exceeds national averages.
• Pupil Premium children make excellent progress from their starting points, and the achievement gap is systematically narrowed through a shared love of literacy.
• Children leave St Patrick’s with a broader cultural capital, a deeper understanding of the world around them, and the ability to develop informed, compassionate points of view.