English

For all Years

Welcome to the English department at Walhampton School! We are a thriving department with a highly skilled team of practitioners expertly covering all areas of the subject in a dynamic and enthusiastic way!

Broadly speaking, the aims of the department at Walhampton School are:

• to enable children to speak clearly and audibly in ways which take account of their listeners;

• to encourage children to listen with concentration in order to be able to identify the main points of what they have heard;

• to enable children to adapt their speech to a wide range of circumstances and demands;

• to develop children’s abilities to reflect on their own and others’ contributions to discussions and the language used;

• to develop confident, fluent, independent readers through an appropriate focus on word, sentence and text-level knowledge;

• to encourage children to become enthusiastic and reflective readers through contact with texts, from a wide range of genres, responding in thoughtful and imaginative ways;

• to develop children’s ability to use information texts and locate, extract and use relevant information in the library and in ICT;

• to develop critical awareness of language and literature;

• to develop creativity and self-expression;

• to help children enjoy writing in all its forms and recognise its value;

• to enable children to write with accuracy and meaning in narrative and non-fiction;

• to develop children’s knowledge of punctuation and the grammatical structure of language;

• to increase the children’s ability to use planning, drafting, editing and good presentational skills to improve their work;

• to express themselves through the experience of performance;

• to foster a positive and supportive relationship with all our pupils, appreciating and nurturing all abilities and having the highest expectations of all children.