Our subject leaders for English are Mr Hawley and Mrs Caparelli.
We are passionate about providing an English curriculum that aims to equip every children with a strong command of the spoken and written word, through rich engagement with a wide range of texts.
Reading is at the heart of our curriculum and begins with the learning of phonics. We follow Phonics Bug, which is the validated systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme that we have found offers the most effective and comprehensive foundation for the development of reading fluency at our school.
Throughout the school, children are immersed in a wide range of high-quality texts, including classic literature. Reading extends children’s knowledge, widens their vocabulary and develops their ideas. Our broad and well-sequenced whole-class reading curriculum is complemented by reading for pleasure - a hugely important learning habit that we relentlessly encourage in all of our children. In reading sessions, we systematically work to develop children's comprehension skills, for example retrieval, inference, summarising, explanation and prediction.
We also teach children at our school to write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. We have developed our own 'Debden Writing Cycle', which enables children to become fully immersed in the writing process, from formulating ideas and analysing WAGOLLs (what a good one looks like) to drafting and editing their final composition. Daily spelling and handwriting, alongside a programme of regular punctuation, grammar and vocabulary lessons enables children to improve the clarity, effectiveness and technical accuracy of their writing.
Please see the key documents below to gain a greater insight into how English is taught and developed at our school.
