At East Farleigh Primary School, aim to develop passionate and capable, life-long learners through an engaging, exciting and carefully planned reading and writing curriculum. We understand the importance of literature in acquiring knowledge but also in developing socially and emotionally, and we place a high emphasis on reading for pleasure to foster a love of reading across the wider curriculum. To achieve this, we are guided by seven core principles of ‘Effective English’:

1. A Happy Place - We strive to create a learning culture that is based on trust and challenge, where environments foster a sense of warmth alongside a focus on high expectations.

2. Know Your Stuff - We aim to communicate skills and knowledge in an illuminating way that enables pupils to think, talk, read and write clearly, completely, critically and creatively.

3. Make it Clear - We believe that a strong interaction between the learner and the teacher is at the heart of the reading and writing process. We achieve this interaction through:

• Discussing, composing and modelling together with pupils so that it is a lively exchange;

• Exposing pupils (as readers) to the writer’s internal voice by verbalising word, phrases and clauses aloud;

• Justifying sentence combinations and cohesion, making decisions about spelling and grammar as ongoing smaller chunks of learning;

• Editing and redrafting “live” so improvements are transparent and highly valued;

• Very clear guidance for pupil’s, with teachers quickly analysing accuracy at word, sentence and text level;

• Encouraging pupils to model for each other and memorise strategies to use in different contexts.

4. Pupils at the Heart - We are attuned to the needs of the pupils by responding sensitively, challenging appropriately and adjusting our teaching accordingly; we always endeavour to respond to pupils in real time.

5. Links and Layers - We value the power of discovery in reading and writing, and actively promote children to make connections, seek patterns and identify similarities through establishing clear cross-curricular links.

6. Talk as a Tool - We use talk to emphasise, magnify and make links in learning. We achieve this through many different dynamics including, teacher to pupil; individual pupil to individual pupil; pupils within a larger group.

7. Review, Reflect, Respond - We always strive to make time in the lesson to review the learning taking place, responding to it specifically and providing enough reflection space for pupils to consider the smaller steps to improve and hone their skills.

We follow a Mastery approach to English through the programme ‘Pathways to Write.’ Units of work are delivered using high quality texts and children in all year groups are given varied opportunities for writing. Skills are built up through repetition within the units, and children apply these skills in the writing activities provided. Many opportunities for widening children’s vocabulary are given through the Pathways to Write approach and this builds on the extensive work we do in school to provide our children with a rich and varied vocabulary.