In English, we follow the National Curriculum but we try as much as possible to link our work to different contexts and topics that will interest the children. If we are carrying out a topic on, for example, Explorers, we may produce work such as an expedition journal, a story, a description, a biography of a famous explorer, or even, as we have done recently, use Edward Lear's poem 'The Jumblies' as a starting point for work as diverse as diary writing and creating persuasive adverts!
We feel very strongly that reading is essential to the development of all other English work, and with this in mind, we have never stopped reading stories to the children. Whole topics may be developed around a book. Recently in Key Stage 2 we have created exciting cross-curricular topics on 'Stig of the Dump', 'Private Peaceful' and 'Gaffer Samson's Luck'. Studying high-quality literature like this encourages children to use more mature language and sentence structuring in their own work.
With the Government's drive to improve grammar, punctuation and spelling, we devote part of our curriculum time to these areas. Over the last year, we have sent home more spellings to learn, and we have received positive feedback from both children and teachers that this method is working. We try to have fun with grammar and punctuation activities; we often play games or create sentences with human punctuation marks.
For many years now, the staff of the school have been developing the role of drama and movement into the writing and speaking and listening curricula. The children love pretending to be someone else and we see both their writing and their confidence develop when acting of some kind is put into the mix. We also make use of our wonderful outdoor space to develop our ideas, whether it might be creating poetry, a story setting or Stig making his den!