English

We understand the importance of continually striving to ensure that every single child leaves St. Mary's able to read and write. More than that, we want all children to have a love of reading and writing having been exposed to a high-quality English curriculum during their time at Primary school.

At St. Mary's, we believe that following a curriculum centred around the highest quality texts is the best way to achieve our goals. By carefully selecting the books which make up our reading spine, we are guaranteeing that all children are exposed to the richest vocabulary, best illustrations, relevant topical issues and exciting new authors. The texts used in English lessons are closely linked to history, geography or science topics, giving the children the opportunity to make cross-curricular connections and deepen their understanding.

In order to facilitate a reading culture at St. Mary's, we have a year 6 team of reading ambassadors. One of their main responsibilities is to work with their assigned class teacher to create a buzz about reading which has been tailored specifically for what that particular class needs/wants. At the same time each week, the whole school stops for 30minutes whilst the reading ambassadors visit their assigned classrooms and engage the class in activities specifically linked to reading (which has been agreed with the class teacher). They also set up regular book 'events' to promote reading and have even started various reading clubs across school.

As well as developing our reading culture, we are also re-vamping our writing curriculum to ensure that each child is given the opportunity to achieve their full potential and make progress. To do this, we aim to reduce the cognitive load by teaching children how to write according to the four purposes of writing: to entertain, to inform, to persuade, and to explain. By reducing the quantity of what children need to remember, we can focus on the quality! Although in its infancy, we're confident that this will have a positive impact on writing across school.

Keep checking this page along with Dojo for updates as we're hoping that soon, our reading ambassadors will update the website each month with exciting features such as: reader of the month, book recommendation of the month, book events across school etc.

We're so excited to be celebrating 25 years of World Book Day in 2022!

Read the letter in the files section to see how we are planning on breaking with tradition and doing things a little bit differently!

Here are some pictures taken on WBD of all our wonderful readers at St. Mary's.