The Christian faith is at the heart of our school community.

At Christ Church we all care, learn and work together for God and others. 

‘For we are all God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do’. Ephesians 2:10 

Our Christian Values are

Creation, Community, Wisdom, Endurance, Thankfulness, Reconciliation

Intent

At Christ Church, we want our rich, quality English curriculum to foster and develop children’s love of reading, writing and the spoken language. Through our teaching in all areas of the curriculum, we aim to inspire children to be confident writers and readers with strong speaking and listening skills. A robust foundation in these key areas serves children well today and for the rest of their lives.

We aim to ensure our English teaching is both accessible and challenging for all. At the heart of our English curriculum – stimulating brilliant discussion and posing fascinating questions – are quality and interesting texts/films that have been written or produced by a diverse range of creatives. These stimuli leave no child behind. 

Learning the mechanics needed to become an accurate and impactful writer is challenging. We strive to provide high-quality, clear modelling as an essential component of effective teaching and learning. We want our children to enjoy a curriculum that aims to carefully sequence progression, beginning with our youngest pupils in Early Years developing sound and strong foundations. Through continuous assessment, we aim to identify the gaps in children’s knowledge quickly and adapt our planning provision so that our English teaching is focussed and impactful.

We want all of our children to leave this school with the requisite skills and knowledge needed to read and write fluently so that they can access the breadth of their secondary curriculum confidently. We want them to be able to express themselves fully and expressively and for a range of purposes.

Implementation

These aims are embedded across our daily English lessons and through a cross-curricular approach to all subjects. We provide a high-quality English curriculum that provides our children with meaningful opportunities for reading, writing and discussion. We use a plethora of quality texts and short films to motivate and inspire our children. Our teachers plan and teach thought-provoking English lessons that are differentiated for the needs of each child in their class.

Our curriculum closely follows the aims of the National Curriculum for English 2014, which aims to ensure that all pupils:

● read easily, fluently and with good understanding
● develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
● acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
● appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
● write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
● use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas
● are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate.

Daily reading is strongly promoted through our ethos and Home Reader Books are monitored closely to ensure pupils are reading a book written with an appropriate level of challenge. At our Friday Celebration Assemblies, special school bookmarks are awarded to children who have been completing their Reading Record in a very conscientious manner. We run reading competitions too, all aimed at encouraging children to read more and connect deeply with books. We ring-fence Story time at Christ Church because it is a special time of the day. At 3pm, the whole school stops what they are doing and every child is read to by their class teacher expertly. 

A deep love of reading is also being created through our beautiful new school library, which was recently opened by Queen Camilla, after we were chosen by the National Literacy Trust to be a flagship recipient of their Libraries for Primaries programme in this important Year of Reading. For more information about this, internet search:  Christ Church giant book club.

We have worked closely with the National Literacy Trust for a number of years and benefitted greatly from the superb events they run. Through their Young Readers programme, they have supported us to run three special reading events each year, at which the children each receive three brand-new books and participate in poetry performances, drama sessions, storytelling workshops and much more! We are lucky to be close to the British Library and we welcome their storytellers every year to perform for our Key Stage 1 children.

Operating in an area of high deprivation, we are acutely aware of our responsibility to bring the creative arts here, into school, in order to drive a love of storytelling and performance. We have welcomed the team from Umbrella Theatre Productions for each of the past three years. Every child in the school has watched live, immersive theatre in our school hall, expertly created and staged by Umbrella Theatre. Shows have included Wind in the Willows and Alice in Wonderland. Our Key Stage 2 children also benefit from our close working relationship with the New Diorama Theatre. Each year, our Year 5 children are part of the theatre company’s Primary School Co-Creation Programme, which sees actors and writers visit the class four times to explore the power of imagination and storytelling. The team from New Diorama write a new play, based on the experiences they have with our children, which gets toured around the country each summer. As a partner of theirs, Christ Church welcomes the actors each year and all of our Key Stage 2 are invited to watch. This year’s play was Time Sliders, a ‘riotous, playful and poignant adventure for 7–11 year-olds, exploring themes of family, loss and ageing.’

We have implemented an effective Marking and Feedback policy to provide our children with regular opportunities to edit and improve their writing. The expectations around checking and editing increase as children move through the school. New symbols are introduced to the marking code when children enter Key Stage 2 but our children benefit greatly from the consistency with which our teachers apply the marking code to their extended writing. Editing writing is challenging for children – knowing what to change and how to do it. As such, we ensure that there is space and time devoted to this in our planning, providing all the children with regular opportunities to watch teachers modelling the editing process and saying their thoughts aloud. Children learn to make decisions around editing by listening to their teachers make and explain similar decisions.  

We run phonics and reading workshops to provide our parents with additional resources and information to equip them with the tools to support their child at home. On the last Friday of each month, we run a “Stay and Read” morning for the children in Early Years and Key Stage 1, giving parents an opportunity to spend quality time with their child around a brilliant text. We provide extra resources for our Year 2 and Year 6 parents to support their child through SATS and our teachers and Senior Leadership Team lead English boosters for our Year 5 and 6 pupils. Our school library is open after-school for children to explore, alongside their parents, and our trained support staff are on hand to support with book choices and recommendations.

At Christ Church, we are deeply aware of the need to help our children develop their speaking skills. Oral rehearsal is built into all of our English planning as being a key component in the journey towards effective writing. To support our children’s oracy development, we have partnered with quality external agencies, such as Eastside Educational Trust and WAC Arts, to engage our pupils in spoken word projects. We ran our first ever poetry slam this year and spoken word projects have culminated in our children performing at Hampstead Town Hall, the Criterion Theatre and St Paul’s Cathedral. This year, we established our first ever Performing Arts Club for children in Years 2-5, run by Toucan Roar Performing Arts. We have employed the same company to support and promote oracy this year by running two whole-school oracy Project Days.

In addition, our English curriculum is enhanced through our World Book Day celebrations, Book Fairs, Sponsored Reads, paired reading, Weekly Spelling Tests and a range of trips and visits that enrich and compliment the children’s learning.

Early Reading

Excellent teaching of early reading and phonics underpins our children’s journey as they develop their English skills and knowledge. The teaching of systematic, synthetic phonics is taught daily from Nursery through to Key Stage One following the Little Wandle scheme of work. Extra, daily support is provided to those in Year 2 who have not passed their phonics screening in Year 1 and interventions are planned for those children who are working below expected levels. Staff systematically teach learners the relationship between sounds and the written spelling patterns, or graphemes, which represent them. Pupils have regular reading sessions with an adult and we ensure the pupils are regularly practising and applying their phonics knowledge. In the Early Years, the continuous provision matches the pupil’s current knowledge and understanding whilst ensuring the children are suitable challenged. Teachers regularly assess the pupil’s phonetic knowledge using the phonics assessment and Reading Early Learning Goal. These regular assessments inform planning and allow teachers to quickly identify any gaps in learning. Every child is given a phonetically decodable book each week to take home and practise with.

Impact

At Christ Church, the impact of our high-quality English provision on our children is clear – we have a school community of enthusiastic and confident readers, writers, story tellers, performers and public speakers. Outcomes in English and across the curriculum show clear progression; children’s language, vocabulary and literacy skills are enhanced and improved across the key stages. Every child is provided with the tools to succeed. Children of all abilities achieve in all lessons and a love of English is entrenched in the ethos and culture of our school community. Our children speak very positively about their English lessons and love how we enrich our curriculum with projects in conjunction with quality partners.  The most disadvantaged children and children with SEND are given the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. Disadvantaged pupils’ progress is significantly above the national average in reading and writing. This is a result of the school’s relentless focus on quality-first teaching for all pupils and timely identification of barriers to learning and intervention where necessary. All children are taught a broad, rich curriculum, and we hope that as children move on from us, to further their education and learning, that their creativity, passion for English and high aspirations travel with them and continue to grow and flourish.