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Communication, Language and Literature

Communication, Language, and Literature is the gateway to all learning so it is at the foundation of our curriculum at Seymour Park Community Primary School. The Communication, Language and Literature curriculum has been designed to enable learners to become confident orators, inquisitive readers and creative writers. Children who read, write and communicate at an aspirational level go on to make a world of difference to themselves and their global community. 

Our Vision

Reading 

High-quality texts and enthusiastic reading are at the heart of our reading curriculum. Children at Seymour Park Community Primary School will be exposed to a language rich and rigorous learning journey which will inspire them to develop their love of reading from an early age. 

Writing 

For our children to thrive in the 21st Century, they must be confident and fluent writers. At Seymour Park Community Primary School our curriculum is designed to engage, scaffold and inspire children to write. 

Spanish 

Learning a foreign language is a necessary part of being a member of a multicultural society and provides a gateway to other cultures. At Seymour Park Community Primary School we aim to foster children's curiosity and deepen their understanding of their world by introducing them to the global language of Spanish in a way that is fun and engaging. 

Aims and objectives

National Curriculum English Core Aims 

  • read easily, fluently and with good understanding
  • develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
  • acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of 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 in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
  • use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas
  • are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate

Our English Core Aims

  • introduce children a wide range of writing that reflects their current and aspirational worlds 
  • extend and develop children's language acquisition and application, with the explicit teaching of a rich vocabulary across all subjects 
  • encourage the use of appropriate vocabulary so children are fully emersed in their learning 
  • children develop as confident orators

NC Spanish Core Aims 

  • understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources
  • speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation
  • can write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt
  • discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.

Our Spanish Core Aims 

  • Build vocabulary and spark interest
  • Make connections between their home languages and Spanish

Curriculum Overviews & Organisation

Reading 

Right from their arrival until they leave Year 6, our children are immersed in literature, beginning with the reading and enjoyment of stories in Nursery, and progressing to deep questioning and study of texts in upper Key Stage 2.  Coupled with the rigorous daily teaching of phonics in EYFS and Key Stage one, we ensure that children have the best possible start to their reading experience.

Children study enjoyable, challenging texts, chosen to reflect their own experiences and to stimulate discussion and investigation, which change half-termly.  The Reading lessons are structured to include explicit teaching of vocabulary, the modelling of reading, discussion and structured questioning from Year 1-Year 6.  All children are readers at Seymour Park, and so we structure lessons where every pupil takes part in learning, which builds upon their prior knowledge, with support where this is required. We know that it is our responsibility to give all children equal opportunities and experiences, in order that all children see themselves as the readers that they can be. Therefore, all of our children complete the same learning in reading lessons, with the learning adapted to meet needs of our children.  Same day intervention and one to one reading or small group reading support takes place where needed.

Guided-Reading-Curric-Overview.pdfReception-curiculum-plan-2020-2021.pdf

 

Phonics  

At Seymour Park we use Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised to teach phonics and early reading. This programme has a systematic progression which begins in Reception and continues until the end of Year 1. Some children will need to continue this into Year 2 and beyond in order to become fluent and confident readers.  An overview of the five phases is shown below. There is also a more detailed termly overview. 

More information and helpful guides for parents can be found on the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised website. Here is the link;

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/

Here is a video explaining the changes to the way we teach phonics and early reading at Seymour Park.

 

Phase

Phonic Knowledge and Skills

Phase One (Nursery/Reception)

Activities are divided into seven aspects, including environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, body sounds, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, voice sounds and finally oral blending and segmenting.

Phase Two (Reception) up to 6 weeks

Learning 19 letters of the alphabet and one sound for each. Blending sounds together to make words. Segmenting words into their separate sounds. Beginning to read simple captions.

Phase Three (Reception) up to 12 weeks

The remaining 7 letters of the alphabet, one sound for each. Graphemes such as ch, oo, th representing the remaining phonemes not covered by single letters. Reading captions, sentences and questions. On completion of this phase, children will have learnt the "simple code", i.e. one grapheme for each phoneme in the English language.

Phase Four (Reception) 4 to 6 weeks

No new grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught in this phase. Children learn to blend and segment longer words with adjacent consonants, e.g. swim, clap, jump.

Phase Five (Throughout Year 1)

Now we move on to the "complex code". Children learn more graphemes for the phonemes which they already know, plus different ways of pronouncing the graphemes they already know.

Year 2 

Working on spelling, including prefixes and suffixes, doubling and dropping letters etc.

 

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Programme-Overview_Reception-and-Year-1-1.pdf


Writing

Each half term, at Seymour Park Community Primary School, children are immersed in a specific text and use this to stimulate their writing. We call this Books for Hooks.

In EYFS, children learn to write through carefully planned continuous provision, adult-led learning and daily phonics lessons, alonngside maximising the many incidental writing opportunities which appear through our EYFS classrooms.

KS1 and KS2, English writing lessons are taught daily, following a two week cycle of writing, whereby children develop specific skills for writing, and then use these, and other skills they have already acquired, to plan, draft, edit and present a piece of writing of a distinct genre.  The source for the writing is always the “Book for Hook”, leading to children becoming immersed in the text and the author and progressing their love for books.  Books for Hooks are carefully chosen to engage and inspire children, and the range of genres of writing are spread across the curriculum, and repeated throughout, in order to build on prior experience.  

Spelling lessons take place twice weekly, following a programme of spelling patterns and tricky words, and children are given the opportunity to demonstrate their learning in the weekly spelling test.

 

Reception-curiculum-plan-2020-2021.pdf

Spanish

All KS2 children from Year 3-6 study Spanish weekly, developing their appreciation for other languages in the future. We use the Spanish Language Scheme Language Angels to support children's learning.

 

 

English as an Additional Language 

Many of our children speak English as an additional language and are enabled through our teaching to access the curriculum as soon as possible, with support available from a specialist teacher where necessary.  

Examples of our Learning

Downloads

Page Downloads Date  
Guided Reading Curriculum Overview 23 24 31st Oct 2023 Download
Spanish Curriculum Overview 23 24 31st Oct 2023 Download
English Curriculum Overview 31st Oct 2023 Download