English

We believe:

At Parkside Academy we know that in order to provide a high-quality education, which will help prepare our pupils for their futures, children must have a solid grasp on all aspects of English: reading, writing, grammar and spelling. As Parkside has literacy at the core of our ambitious curriculum, we help inspire our pupils’ curiosity and provide pupils with crucial skills that are fundamental to unlocking all subjects in the curriculum and, equally as important, help them to explore the world around them, through secondary school and beyond.

Knowledge

Reading, writing and oracy are the tools within which all knowledge is imparted and entrenched; therefore ‘English’ is embedded throughout, within and across our Parkside curriculum. Within ‘English’ itself, knowledge starts from the earliest of experiences with phonemic awareness, leading to phoneme/grapheme correspondences – with children learning to read being our absolute priority. Alongside this, children constantly build their personal bank of vocabulary as well as knowledge of the way the English language works, its grammatical conventions, sentence components, its subtleties and nuances. Children also build a knowledge of ‘rich stories’, being exposed to high quality texts that are read to them, shared and discussed with them as well as reading these for themselves. Knowledge of famous authors and poets are embedded within our curriculum.

Understanding

For centuries, words have been our most powerful tool in helping generations recognise their past, to help understand their present to better inform their future. At Parkside Academy, we share this love of vocabulary and the magic of words. Through reading a range of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and traditional tales, our children are immersed in a breadth of vocabulary to help them explore their place in the local community, their nation and the world, and use these texts as fuel to write their own musings on the world they live in to help continue this cycle.

Achieving

Through rich stories, pupils meet significant people (from the past and present), who have left an everlasting imprint of our world. By introducing pupils to these figures within English lessons, or other subjects across the curriculum and story time; important themes, values and lessons are shared. Reading inspirational stories, provides us with mirrors, windows and doors to the possibilities of our future and allow us to set aspirations we wish to achieve.

Broadening

The literary world takes many shapes and sizes and holds a whole range of possibilities. It is an area where imagination can take hold and transport us to different cities, countries or realms. Through a variety of carefully chosen books, children at Parkside are introduced to places beyond the school gates and meet people from the past and around the world. By putting the stories into context, we bring to life the sense of curiosity, exploration and discovery and, in turn, evoke these ambitions in our children.