EnglishEnglish lessons are well embedded within our thematic curriculum. Teachers use carefully chosen quality fiction texts that support the children’s learning in other subject areas. The texts act as the stimulus to teach pupils to speak and write fluently, so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others. Having engaging and challenging core texts allows pupils to develop a love of literature and read for enjoyment. Ensuring all pupils develop all the skills of language are essential not only in order to access the rest of the curriculum but also to participate fully as a member of society and ultimately impact on their future life chances.
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Here are some of our core texts:
We use our thematic curriculum as the vehicle for non-fiction reading and writing. We use links with subjects such as science and history to develop the children’s understanding of non-fiction genres and read and write in meaningful ways.
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Talk for Writing
All of our English units of work contain aspects of Talk for Writing; an engaging yet rigorous talk based approach to English teaching. Children are taught to speak and perform a wide range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts and to read and explore the purpose and language of each text type. When they are familiar with a text type, for example folk tales, they then write their own version of the tale, using high quality language taken or ‘magpied’ from the original text.
Finally, when they are thoroughly confident with the language of the genre, children write their own original text which is often shared and celebrated in displays or whole class books. This approach has proven effective across Tower Hamlets in supporting strong language development in children who speak English as an additional language and supports our curriculum driver of ‘communication’ very well.
