English

Vision and Principles

English at Blenheim:  English teaching at Blenheim will provide children with the opportunity to develop their speaking and listening, reading and writing skills. They will become confident speakers and attentive listeners. This in turn will develop their ability to understand texts and write with clarity and purpose. With more and more information available on pcs and iPad, children will be taught the value of books as vehicles for reading for pleasure and as sources of information. Also, with the advent of text messaging and emails, children will be taught the importance of putting pen to paper. Children at Blenheim will be taught phonics to give them the skills to blend sounds for reading and segment words for writing. They will study a wide range of both fiction and non-fiction texts in Reading skills and English lessons. They will be taught how to develop key comprehension skills including prediction, summarising, retrieval and inference. Children are encouraged to read both with parents/carers at least five times a week as well as read independently. Pupils will learn how to compose clear sentences to express their ideas. They will be encouraged to up-level their work and be taught a wide range of techniques to do this, including using powerful vocabulary, different sentence types and a range of punctuation. To complement this, children will be taught spelling strategies, different types of punctuation and how to write using the correct grammar in separate lessons. Key spellings will be sent home weekly and tested within school the following week. The pupils will also be expected to develop their handwriting and will be taught how to do this in discrete lessons. They will be taught how to write in the cursive style and will be encouraged to start joining their letters from an early age. They will be rewarded for their neat handwriting by being given a pen licence.