Our English Vision
A Willow Bank Infants reader, writer, speaker and performer will have a rich and varied literary experience where they are exposed to high quality texts and opportunities to inspire their own work. They will communicate their unique ideas, views and feelings with confidence. Their writing will adapt based on a wide range of contexts and purposes, drawing upon their wide reading for pleasure.
Our English Intent
At Willow Bank Infant School, our English curriculum teaches the children to read as a reader and to read as a writer. We carefully select engaging, high-quality texts which inspire the children’s own writing. The children are authors and provided with opportunities to make their own reading, writing and performing decisions. Our children become fluent and effective readers and writers by developing author style, grammar and punctuation choice alongside editing skills.
We know that our children write best when they understand the purpose of the work they are doing so we communicate this with them. Our children’s English work is celebrated in the classroom and beyond, through displays, newsletters, social media and performances.
At Willow Bank Infant School fluency is prioritised from the earliest stages of reading, with a clear focus on the teaching and learning of phonics in EYFS and KS1 following the Read, Write, Inc. Scheme. All of our children take books home to support their reading and they also have access to our wonderfully varied school library books.
Spelling, grammar and punctuation are carefully woven through our writing curriculum, providing real life contexts in our key texts. Our progressive approach to oracy is that children are explicitly taught to talk effectively to articulate their own viewpoints and ideas. We encourage our children to speak in full, considered sentences when answering questions and speaking in all lessons.
Our English Impact
Children are immersed in high-quality literary experiences while at Willow Bank Infant School which prepares them to be confident speakers, writers and performers in the next stage of their education. Children speak eloquently about the high-quality texts they enjoy reading. Children's writing displays individuality - no two children's writing is the same, but it draws upon the literary style of a wide range of texts and authors.
Children's English work is performed and published to provide a purpose and context to their writing. Examples include:
- Performing poetry in class assemblies
- Children's writing made into class books for our school library
- Writing is published in our school newsletters and displayed around school
- Drama performances to parents
- Sharing their writing with parents during our termly tray days
