English

The aim of our English curriculum is to develop pupils’ abilities within an integrated programme of Speaking & Listening, Reading and Writing.

Pupils will be given opportunities to interrelate the requirements of English within a broad and balanced approach across the curriculum, with opportunities to deepen their learning and consolidate and reinforce taught English skills.

Our goal for English education is that children will be able to speak, read and write fluently and effectively so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others, through the three ‘BIG ideas’:

Comprehension: I can understand and interpret what I have read by combining reading, thinking and reasoning alongside growing vocabulary knowledge.

Creativity: I can push my imagination and think outside the box.

Composition: I can assemble words and sentences to create coherent and meaningful spoken and written sentences.

Following the national curriculum, and combined with our ‘big ideas’ and ‘golden threads’ of learning, we have created a personalised curriculum of Reading and Writing for the Children of Grimsargh St Michael’s C of E Primary School.

‘Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow.’ (Lawrence Clark Powell)

Mrs Knight is our Reading and Speaking & Listening Lead. Mrs Coupe is our Phonics and Writing Lead. You can contact either leader via the office (01772 653600) with any queries or questions.

Click here to read the National Curriculum: English Programmes of Study.

Early Reading

Please access our school reading page to help support the development of reading at home with your child: Reading

Phonics
High quality teaching and learning of Phonics, ensures early reading is at the heart of our curriculum.

To ensure children at our school become confident, fluent and independent readers, high quality, synthetic Phonics is taught daily using our chosen programme Red Rose Letters and Sounds.

The intent behind Red Rose Letters and Sounds is to provide a rigorous and thorough planning programme in order to strengthen the teaching and learning of phonics, and ensure children become enthusiastic and successful readers and writers (and for those children who require continuity of Phonics provision in Key Stage 2).

Please visit our Phonics page for more information: Phonics

Speaking and Listening

Developing language and communication skills is vital for children’s progress in English.

https://www.lancashire.gov.uk/children-education-families/early-years-childcare-and-family-support/walk-and-talk/

Walk and Talk is about inspiring families to go outside and communicate with each other.
Talking to young children during everyday activities can help them learn communication skills such as:

listening
attention
turn taking in a conversation
learning new words

Our Reading Journey (Subject Development 2025/26):

Objectives:

To provide support to staff in making adaptations in reading.
To provide ideas and support for how to use prior-learning/assessment effectively in reading.
To continue to create an effective learning environment for reading.
To improve pupils’ speaking and listening skills to deepen engagement and comprehension in reading.

Our Writing Journey (School Improvement Priority 2025/26):

TRIC
Every class, every day, enjoy ‘TRIC’ Time (Teacher Reading in Class) after lunch for 10 minutes. This is a positive, pleasurable time for children to listen to engaging novels, poems, stories or non-fiction texts written by a variety of authors.
As well as this, there are many benefits of reading a whole class text:

Encountering new words and enriching vocabulary – you experience words that would almost never come up in conversation.
Helps students appreciate the beauty and rhythm of language.
Children can enjoy and understand texts beyond their own reading ability.
Enhances imagination and observation skills.
Improves critical and creative thinking skills.
Expands a student’s general knowledge and understanding of the world.
Empathy is developed as they make connections with the experiences of the characters in the text and with each other.
Fluent, expressive reading is modelled.
Enables them to make meaning from more complex texts.
Conditions the brain to associate reading with pleasure.
Plants a desire to read.