English

English at Gateway Primary School - providing essential skills and independence through a love of reading and writing. 

Vision Statement

At Gateway Primary School we believe that reading is at the heart of all our English learning, which then inspires our pupils to write with confidence and enjoyment. We want our pupils to feel inspired and enthusiastic when they read, in addition to challenging themselves and being able to ask questions about the texts they are reading. Using a variety of quality, engaging texts, we believe our children will learn to love books and stories and have developed a pleasure for reading at a young age. We believe that this love of reading will then give the pupils the confidence, creativity and the independence to write for a real purpose.   We provide our pupils with enjoyable  opportunities to write based on carefully chosen texts which link to the wider curriculum. The children are taught to explore the chosen text, learn about the characters, plot or subject, which then leads to precise teaching on the grammar or vocabulary skills needed to link the text to the final writing outcome. 

English at Gateway offers children an opportunity to: 

• Be taught great lessons using well planned text based learning journeys. 

• Interact and explore a wide range of high quality fiction and non-fiction texts which is linked to our thematic curriculum. 

• Love reading and choose books independently. 

• Be motivated to write in a range of contexts and genres.

• Write confidently for a real purpose which is linked to both the texts studied and the children's own experiences. 

• Be confident at spelling

• Use cursive handwriting

• Use their reading and writing skills throughout the whole curriculum. 

English lessons at Gateway encourage children to: 

• Study texts in guided reading which link to the wider curriculum 

• Be excited about the text we are studying by providing interactive and exciting hooks for books. 

• Explore grammatical skills, and high tier vocabulary from the text and apply it to their writing. 

• Independently plan, write and edit high quality pieces linked to the text for a range of genres using the skills they have learnt. 

• Apply the skills they have learnt in phonics and spelling lessons in order to read confidently and to create increasingly accurate pieces of writing.