'Reading and writing float on a sea of talk' - James Britton (1970)

At Orchid Vale, English is the cornerstone of our curriculum. Children in our school read, speak and write fluently. This allows them to communicate their ideas and emotions to others; and for others, in turn, to communicate with them. Through confidence and fluency in English, particularly reading, children are able to access and build upon a wealth of emotional, cultural, social, spiritual and intellectual knowledge. This will enable them to grow into fully independent, well-informed, articulate adult members of society.

Reading

Reading has a high profile in our school, and we are very proud to have achieved the One Education Silver Reading Award in 2024.  Adults read aloud to children, ensuring that they become familiar with a range of stories and authors from our literary heritage, including a range of texts from a wide range of cultural and historical contexts.   Reading areas are attractive, prominent and well-stocked.  We use Accelerated Reader to help pupils access the correct level of book and to help develop their reading comprehension skills further.  There are timetabled whole-class structured reading sessions every day in school. This allows children to read for pleasure, while improving reading fluency, developing a rich vocabulary and widening their comprehension skills.   Children of all ages read 1:1 with an adult, with vulnerable groups identified for additional work with support staff. All children take books home; for our younger children, these are Big Cat phonics books linked to our Little Wandle scheme, while older children make their own selections from their Accelerated Reader book level. Books are inclusive and accessible, supplemented each year by an affordable book fair in school. In Year 1, children undertake guided reading sessions based on the Little Wandle scheme where they develop skills in fluency, prosody, comprehension;

From Year 2 onwards, reading comprehension is taught as a discrete whole-class reading lesson planned as part of the week’s sequence of teaching.  Teachers have a strong knowledge of children’s literature and take a personal interest in supporting and developing individual children’s love of books. Reading is assessed formatively by teachers through Testbase tests at three points each year. Standards are monitored through regular planning and book scrutiny by the English leader, in addition to learning walks, observations and pupil's voice.

Oracy

Our school rule ‘be a great listener’ encourages children to develop an attentive and respectful approach to hearing each other’s ideas. Group activities in English lessons enable children to share, discuss and evaluate concepts verbally. They have opportunities to develop speaking skills through in-class presentations, class assemblies, drama productions and cross-curricular events, such as our Oracy Projects, where pupils present a topic of their choice and can be chosen to represent their school in our Trust Oracy presentation finals.   Children learn poems by heart and prepare them for oral performance. Children’s cultural capital is developed through exposure to live theatre events and performances.

What our pupils think

I love English because it lets me experience life in different ways through the different characters and worlds that I meet in stories.  

I like reading at Orchid Vale because we have a wide variety of genres that we get to read in guided reading.

I enjoy English because I learn about different styles of writing and I learn definitions of words I have never heard before, such as ostler. 

I like English because we are taught everything, we need to know about the English language. 

I like reading because we get to just read our books in peace and quiet. 

I enjoy creative writing English lessons because, at school, it is a calm and focused environment where I can write stories and such without distractions. 

I like English because it helps me with my descriptive language and helps me put detail in my writing. I also like English when we write stories. 

I enjoy reading because when I read it makes me picture things in my head that probably won’t happen to me. 

I like English as we get to write stories involving lots of different characters.

I really like English because teachers vary the types of things we write and how we write them.

I also love guided reading because it is like a mini-comprehension that is different for everyone, and it takes it to a world from your dreams.

I think that at school the variety of books that we can read is very large as sometimes I can read a non-fiction book and then, as soon as I've finished, I can find a fiction or non-fiction book that I enjoy. 

I like writing stories because the teachers challenge us to use a wider range of vocabulary and interesting figurative language. 

My favourite genre of books is fantasy. I am fond of mysteries like ‘Sherlock Holmes’ but I prefer books like ‘Artemis Fowl’ and ‘Harry Potter’, which have an element of fantasy. For example, in ‘Artemis Fowl’, there is a fairy community. 

We have 20 minutes of reading every day to relax our brains. 

English is about quality, not quantity.  

 

At Orchid Vale, we value lifelong learning. Please see a link to a website that shows pupils how they can use English in a future career:

Careers that English can lead to