English Curriculum at Janet Duke

At Janet Duke Primary school we use a variety of teaching and learning styles in our English lessons, such as Talk for Writing.

Our principal aim is to develop children’s knowledge, skills, and understanding. We do this through a daily lesson in which children will experience a whole-class reading or writing activity that may also include sentence level and word level. The children will also experience a guided group or independent activity, and a whole-class session to review and evaluate progress and learning. Whilst there is a high proportion of whole-class and group teaching, the  independent activity gives an opportunity to talk and collaborate, and so embed  and enhance their learning. The children have the opportunity to experience a wide range of texts, and to support their work with a variety of resources, such as dictionaries and thesauruses.

Children can have the opportunity to use computers in English lessons where it enhances their learning, as in drafting their work. Wherever possible we encourage children to use and apply their learning in other areas of the curriculum.

Reading and Vocabulary Across the Curriculum.

We know that Literacy is fundamental to all areas of learning, as it unlocks access to the wider curriculum. A literate individual is granted greater life opportunities and the foundation for lifelong learning and employment, which strongly contributes to the development of all aspects of social and academic life.

At Janet Duke Primary School, we understand that competence and confidence in literacy, includes competence in grammar, spelling and the spoken word, and are all essentials for progress across the whole curriculum. Pupils need to receive as many different opportunities for reading (for development of skills and for pleasure) and exposure to as many different words as possible, for them to make expected or accelerated progress from their starting points and for Y6 to leave primary school being able to read in line with their chronological age. To this end, we provide pupils with a range of reading materials and opportunities to access texts in foundation subjects and Science, in addition to ones specific to English and Guided Reading lessons, as many cross curricular links are made as possible. Pupils’ repertoire in reading and comprehension skills and exposure to a range of vocabulary from Tier 2 and Tier 3 thus increases life chances and enables pupils to have the skills needed not only for further education but in other areas of life. Further opportunities for exposure to vocabulary and reading skills across the curriculum have also been included on ‘Janet Duke Primary 100 Life Experiences’ these also cover cross curricular subjects and ensure that pupils have well rounded learning.

For children to understand a text and ensure that they comprehend all that they have read, they must know the meaning of 95% of the words in a text. Our pupils are faced with challenging texts on a daily basis and a good deal of the reading in our classrooms will include vocabulary that is unfamiliar and difficult.

The words we use can be organised into three tiers:

Tier 1 – these are words that are used every day in our classrooms.

Tier 3 – these are technical words that are used in our curriculum subjects.

Tier 2 – these are words that need to be taught explicitly so that our children can use them to make sense of the technical Tier 3 vocabulary.

Our Vocabulary Progression

The downloadable documents below show the Tier 2 words that our pupils will learn and use across the curriculum.