ENGLISH

Our aim at Holy Cross is that our pupils will develop the motivation to read for both study and pleasure. We want them to find great joy and satisfaction in reading a good book, including the classics. To enable pupils to access enjoyment through reading, our curriculum will support them to read with fluency, accuracy and confidence.

Our approach to teaching reading and writing is systematic and thorough, beginning with pupils gaining excellent phonic knowledge and skills. Building upon this, we will teach comprehension skills so that pupils can understand a rich and varied range of texts. Through reading widely and through explicit teaching, pupils will build their use and range of expressive language and vocabulary. Above all they will grow up loving to read and write.

At Holy Cross, we follow The Literary Curriculum which is a complete book based approach to teaching Primary English. Children become critical readers and acquire and authorial style as they encounter a wide range of significant authors and a variety of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Our approach to teaching Primary English ensures that every term has a thematic link, an engaging starting point, embedded comprehension, embedded grammar, explicit teaching of spelling and vocabulary, literary language explicitly taught and purposeful and engaging writing opportunities. 

Pupils at Holy Cross take part in whole class reading sessions. Over the course of a term, the class share two books chosen by the school’s Literacy Leader. These books form our Reading Canon of essential titles for primary aged pupils and are linked thematicly to the books in our English lessons.