Welcome to the English area of our website

Here are our subject leaders for English at St James':

Reading & Writing: Miss Tindall & Mrs. Bibby

Early Reading & Phonics: Miss Bryan

Our Christian Vision for English:

At St. James’, we aim to foster and promote a love of reading for all our children. We believe that reading opens up another world to children beyond their own experiences and can spark their imagination. Reading is something that involves the wider school community; it can be done at home with families, with an adult in school, with another child or simply for pleasure. Reading is a lifelong skill that we equip the children with so that they can leave our school ready for the next stage in their life. Beyond education, the foundations that we put into place for reading will develop vocabulary and communication skills for a wide range of paths the children may take in the future.

At St James' we believe that literacy - speaking, listening, reading and writing - is a key life skill which contributes to all aspects of academic, social and emotional development. This is why we have put literacy at the heart of our curriculum through which children not only learn the skills but have regular opportunities to apply them for a purpose through real experiences. It is our aim that our children become enthusiastic readers and writers and are able to communicate effectively and confidently across the curriculum.

Snapshot of English

Reading

Reading is an integral part of the process of learning and also an essential life skill. We are always looking to champion reading in everything that we do in school. With this in mind, we have some exciting story-based events coming up this term in school that are designed to promote a love of reading. 

Writing

A focus this year has been on cross-curricular writing. The children have produced some amazing work linked to their studies in History, Geography and Science. More information on the links made between English and other subjects can be found on our English overview document on this web page. 

Oracy

Being articulate and speaking confidently in public (be that 1 person or 100) is a key life skill and one that we are working hard on in school. It is also one of our SKATS (Skills and Attitudes) that runs alongside the National Curriculum requirements. From speaking to their partner or teacher to performing in a whole class production, we are constantly looking for ways to promote this. Oracy is incorporated into every aspect of our school life but is something which we focus on particularly in English. We have had a Y6 debating team who have practised their 'argumentative skills' during debates. The debating skill of putting your point across is also developed in other classes too through our curriculum teaching and class talk rules. 

Staff Professional Development

At St James' we are always looking at ways to improve our teaching. We have all been looking at how to make sure that we are teaching shared writing correctly. We worked together to make sure that all of our English Units include lots of short writing opportunities as well as a quality shared piece of writing. We also looked at how to make sure grammar is included in a purposeful way for each unit.

The SOLs pupil voice group visited Waterstones to fulfil each class's wish list of books for their reading areas. Thanks to their fundraising (through their pre-loved book sale) and the generosity of the PTFA, they were able to buy lots of new books for each class. 

At St. James', we love to write for a purpose and when the children create something amazing, we have to shout about it! Year 6 wrote some incredible poems around the theme 'Refuge' and decided to publish them into our very own anthology. We decided to keep this in the waiting area outside the office for any visitors to read and enjoy. 

SOLs Book Sale

The SOLs group organised a book sale to raise money so we can buy new books for our reading corners and add some new books into our home reading scheme. The children loved it!

VIPERS 

VIPERS is an acronym to aid the recall of the 6 reading domains as part of the UK’s reading curriculum.  They are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts. All of our Guided Reading and 1:1 Reading sessions focus on VIPERS 

VIPERS stands for

Vocabulary

Inference

Prediction

Explanation

Retrieval

Sequence or Summarise

Rationale

We follow Lancashire English Planning &  we use Lancashire English Progression documents to ensure progression within and between year groups.

We use the Lancashire English LAPs Guidance documents to plan smaller steps of progression to achieve main objectives in Writing and Reading.