Whole school quality texts
At Our Lady Immaculate, our aim is to promote high standards of English throughout the school through stimulating and engaging literacy lessons.
The 2014 National Curriculum 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.
We put good quality children’s literature at the heart of English teaching, through a highly regarded approach using quality texts . This approach promotes a high standard of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment. This, in turn, helps build a rich curriculum where intent and implementation leads to the impact and improved outcomes for children.
Research
There is a wealth of research to show that one of the most effective ways to become a good writer is to be an avid reader; to unpick language from books and use this as a model for quality writing.
This approach is founded by ‘The Centre for Language in Primary Education’ which has supported schools in raising engagement and attainment in reading and writing for all pupils for thirteen years and more recent research from the EEF ( Educational Endowment Foundation) , Improving Literacy in key stage 1 and Key stage 2. The Book Trust ‘The Write Book’ research project found that ‘Using high quality books to inspire and emulate writing encourages children to think of themselves as writers’.
The latest guidance from Ofsted recognises the importance of young children being introduced to good quality literature as an essential way of enabling them to build a wide and rich vocabulary
‘The active encouragement of reading for pleasure should be a core part of every child’s curriculum entitlement because extensive reading and exposure to a wide range of texts make a huge contribution to students’ educational achievement.’ All-Party Parliamentary Group for Education, 2018
Many authors cite reading widely and enthusiastically as their number one writing tip.
Across School
From our Nursery classes up to year 6 , books have been carefully chosen to fit within a broad and balanced curriculum. We use high quality vehicle texts for each year group to study and teachers develop a rich reading curriculum that enhances reading comprehension and provides meaningful contexts and purposes for writing in addition to ensuring a diverse range of authors’ backgrounds and experiences.
This involves planning an engaging English curriculum using a wide range of high-quality vehicle texts for each year group every half-term. We have implemented an English curriculum with a foundation of both classic and long-standing much-loved books and novels as well as new and upcoming authors and texts and books with no text . We have invested in bringing in a range of quality texts, including buying some of the whole class sets of books and novels that each class are studying.
Part of our whole-school approach will be to provide a ‘Hook’ to engage and excite the children about their new text. Then immerse them in their class texts, exploring the way the author uses language and to explore this to develop our children as writers.
You’ll see us promote our vehicle and class activities via our website and Twitter.
We’ll send newsletters about the books that each class are studying and texts that we are excited about, with recommendations for reading at home.
Please read below to view the overviews for vehicle texts, progression as well as the writing opportunities taken from them.