English

“One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world” - Malala Yousafzai

At South Hylton Primary Academy we believe English is a fundamental life skill; it develops children’s ability to communicate effectively – to listen, speak, read and write for a wide range of purposes, with confidence and enjoyment.

At South Hylton Primary Academy, writing is at the heart of our curriculum. Our children enjoy a language-rich journey through our school, accessing a range of high-quality fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts which feed into the writing process. This is based on our reading into writing model, underpined by Literature Works.

Through our ‘reading into writing’ approach, we have ensured that all of our children are exposed to a range of stories, authors, styles and cultures.

Skills and knowledge in writing are carefully sequenced in order to give our pupils a platform to become 'Extraordinary'’ with creativity being a main driver of our curriculum. Our pupils will pen writing in a range of styles for multiple audiences and purposes, drawing on what they have read for inspiration.

By the end of Year Six, we intend for our pupils to have developed a love and appreciation for both writing and reading, equipping them with a lifelong skill for their future education, employment and enjoyment.

Children of all ages are expected to read at home, with a book matched to either their phonics or Accelerated Reader level.

A strong start

The teaching of early reading starts with our youngest children inExplorers and nursery. To ensure our nursery children are well prepared and ready to begin learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending from week one in Reception we:

• Prioritise high-quality adult-child interactions, including frequent back and forth conversations
• Provide activities that develop listening and attention, including oral blending
• Teach through a balance of child-led and adult-led experiences
• Deliver our curriculum through the use of carefully selected stories, songs and rhymes
• Share high-quality stories every day

The teaching of  high-quality phonics

We recognise the importance of all children making a strong start in learning to read. At South Hylton Primary Academy, we have adopted the Read Write Inc. (RWI) systematic phonics programme. This is a rigorous programme which ensures children in Reception and Key Stage 1 quickly gain the phonics knowledge and early reading skills that they need.

Pupils work within ability groups which are defined by their performance on RWI phonic assessments. Pupils are re-assessed every half term and the groups are re-organised accordingly.

A Parent's Guide to RWI: https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-schemes-oxford-levels/read-write-inc-phonics-guide/

Our Literature Spine

At South Hylton Primary Academy, we believe it is imperative to our children’s lives that they can not only read, but that they become readers. As such, we aim to start their reading journeys with a passion and enthusiasm for stories and books, alongside building their confidence in de-coding and reading for themselves. We hope to ignite a love of reading at this early stage in their lives, that they will carry with them forever.To this end, we have developed our literature spine. This has been designed by the staff at South Hylton Primary Academy with the intention of mapping out our pupils’ core entitlement in order to create a living library in the child’s mind.

We have used our own expertise and, with support from experts in children’s literature (FFT Literacy and Literature Works Newcastle), we believe that our spine reflects the best children’s literature – carefully selected for its quality and for how it can support our children’s understanding of our society and the wider world.

We have selected texts that are diverse in order to help our pupils to become tolerant, respectful, well-informed and empathetic young people. It is important to us that our selected titles not only reflect our shared British heritage but also cultures across the world. In order to fully prepare our young readers for the next stage in their education, we have selected books that are complex not just in the language they use, and that demand more from our students as readers. As such, our reading spine is a launchpad for our pupils’ own journey as lifelong readers.

South Hylton Primary Academy works to ensure that all children develop the ability to communicate effectively and that any barriers to learning are swiftly identified and steps are taken to remove them so that all children are given the chance to flourish and access the whole curriculum.

For detailed information about our curriculum and subjects, please visit the Key Information page.