English

It is our vision that children leave St Michael’s as passionate readers and writers equipped with the core literacy and communication skills to enable them to fulfil their true potential. We want them to truly enjoy reading and writing for both pleasure and purpose. We are fully committed to providing an engaging curriculum which will build cultural capital, inspire our learners and unlock doors for their future.

We highly value reading at St Michael’s and set aside a period every day where the whole school is devoted to this purpose. We aim to enthuse and engage children via a variety of high quality, diverse texts, personal reading recommendations and peer led promotions including our Reading Ambassador program. We encourage children to explore a broad range of genres and authors, including modern texts and classics. This will extend their repertoire and enable them to become more confident and accomplished readers.

We inspire a passion for English by providing opportunities which are enriching and enhance learning including author visits, workshops, theatre trips, themed events, competitions, creative writing opportunities, drama and poetry productions, and give children a voice through our own school magazine.

It is important that our curriculum integrates tasks and purposes related to the ‘real world’ beyond school, including providing real audiences and contexts. In all lessons, we have clear learning objectives allowing for progression, challenge and reinforcement of key knowledge and skills. Through careful planning and providing appropriate levels of challenge, all children can experience a sense of achievement and success.

Core Values

English builds ASPIRATION by:

Setting aspirational challenges within lessons for all children.
Sharing exemplary models for children to aim for in their own writing.
Giving children a real purpose for writing (e.g.preparing persuasive speeches to deliver to a real audience, writing letters to the headteacher and publishing articles in the school magazine).

English builds BELIEF by:

Equipping children with the skills to achieve.
Celebrating the work children have produced and recognising their success.
Developing cultural capital and building confidence.

English builds CREATIVITY by:

Encouraging self expression and helping children find their voice.
Giving children creative choices in their writing.
Exposing children to a range of texts from different cultures and perspectives (e.g. KS3 uses drama to develop an understanding of texts and characters. We look at texts which explore real-life issues such as social injustice in ‘Long Way Down’ and bullying in 'Tell Me No Lies'

Where it all fits in