Our English Curriculum Statement: 

Our English curriculum at Stella Maris is used to promote a love of reading and writing across the curriculum and at home. We encourage our learning values of Independence, Interdependence, Challenge, Spirituality, Thinking and Creativity to ensure high standards of achievement and success for all our children.

Please see the 'Intent, Implementation and Impact' sections below to find out more about our English Curriculum at Stella Maris.

Subject leader for English: Mrs Couchman

POR Approach - The Power of Reading.

At Stella Maris, we use ‘The Power of Reading’ (POR) to promote a love of literature and as the base of our English curriculum. The subject is taught creatively and effectively, putting quality children’s books at the heart of all learning. The Power of Reading book schemes support our teachers to nurture a whole school love of reading and writing. The use of high quality children’s texts helps to immerse children fully into the novel resulting in an immediate and positive impact on the writing produced. Through our teaching of English and learning environments, we aim to create an ethos of reading for pleasure and understanding the importance of reading aloud.

Our creative curriculum allows teachers to provide storytelling and drama opportunities as well as time for exploring the development of language and narrative; developing fictional narratives; reading skills and strategies; exploring non-fiction and the importance of poetry.

The POR journey at Stella Maris begins in EYFS with children sharing a range of quality texts. Please see the tabs below to explore further the texts we use and share with the children from EYFS to upper key stage two.

Phonics:

We currently use ‘Little Wandle’ to plan, teach and track our phonics progress. Please find further information in our Phonics and Early Reader section here.

Handwriting:

From Reception, a printed script is taught to promote high standards of handwriting and to support the children in their spelling strategies and to match the print that they read in their phonics books.

A cursive script is gradually introduced from Summer Term, Year 1 if the children are consistently forming their letters in print.

Spelling:

Please see the spelling appendix from the National Curriculum England, which we use for the teaching of spelling rules and to set weekly spelling activities for homework, based tasks:

Writing Progression of Skills document

Our skills in writing cover 4 main areas:

• Composition; Structure and Purpose
• Vocabulary, grammar and punctuation
• Spelling
• Handwriting

Skills are built on, year on year, so that by the time children leave Stella Maris they are confident and creative writers, equipped with all of the skills required to produce pieces of writing for any genre.

Reading Progression of Skills document

Our skills in writing cover 2 main areas:

• Word reading
• Comprehension

Reading is essential in all curriculum subjects and therefore skills need to be built on, year on year. By the time children leave Stella Maris, they have the ability to read fluently and be able to answer and ask questions about the texts they are reading.