English

At Holbrook, we recognise that without effective communication, little achievement can be made. We know that we have a duty to ensure that English teaching is a priority as we recognise that this it is a crucial skill necessary throughout school life and beyond. It is part of the ‘essential knowledge’ needed for children to enter society as well-rounded citizens.

What we believe for our curriculum

We aim to provide a wide range of opportunities for our pupils to read and write for a purpose and for a real-life audience. This leads to pupils self-reflecting, critiquing and becoming fully immersed in their topic areas.

Through English we aim to support this philosophy by:

• fostering the enjoyment that exploring our rich literary heritage can bring
• enabling children to develop and explore their skills in English with increasing maturity and awareness of audience;
• encouraging children to work and explore this subject independently and with others (pairs/groups) through speaking & listening activities; drama; writing for an audience and purpose and philosophical discussions and debates;
• modelling to children how to improve the quality of their written work in English leading to them effectively editing and improving to a high standard;
• teaching children to critically analyse their work and the work produced by others
• encouraging and celebrating creativity and imagination in this subject
• teaching basic skills such as grammar terminology and comprehension leading to their application across the wider curriculum

At Holbrook we recognise that children learn best when they are provided with opportunities to revisit, revise and reflect on their skills and understanding in order to apply their learning across all areas of the curriculum. Pupils are given opportunities to develop their use, knowledge and understanding of spoken and written English within a broad and balanced curriculum, with opportunities to consolidate and reinforce taught literacy skills.

How we put our aims into daily practice

Holbrook’s curriculum is driven each term by a key literary text. A central key text each term enables us to support literacy across the curriculum and the text is prodominantly chosen for its academic merit . This initial ‘driving text,’ is then supported with additional literature around the same theme of learning enabling the introduction of non-fiction, poetry and other genres. In November ’25, we began our ‘Faster Reading Program’ which involves the teacher/expert reader modelling high quality reading aloud to the whole class while they follow long using their own copy of their ‘Faster Reader’ text.

All our carefully selected classic and high quality modern texts ensure that all children are immersed in a rich vocabulary-based curriculum. In addition to this, challenging context derived vocabulary is woven into the curriculum in the form of ‘fancy pants’ words for EYFS and ROK words/ Subject Specific Vocabulary word lists for Key Stage 1 and 2. These cross-curricular academic word lists are shared with parents at the start of each topic and are clearly displayed in each classroom. Over the course of a term pupils are encouraged to rehearse, revise and revisit these words and embed them into both their spoken and written English.

Valuable Speaking and Listening opportunities at Holbrook include:

Poetry Recitals as part of National Poetry Day; persuasive speeches following the Year 5 Suffolk Food Hall Trip and as WW1 recruitment officers; School Council Campaign Speeches; Eco-School Council and Junior Road Safety presentations; participation in a mock trial at Ipswich Crown Court ;Class Assembly performances to parents,  and School Productions.

Pre-teaching

Our aim is to ensure that, prior to each theme of learning, children are immersed in experiences that allow them to access the curriculum and class text. Planning in other curriculum areas are deliberately organised to allow all children to access texts and other subsequent learning experiences in English We inform parents of the theme of learning the term before it is taught encouraging them to support their children with relevant experiences. Trips and experiences are arranged, wherever possible, at the start of each theme of learning and then referred to as a valuable stimulus during the term.

The English subject leader provides a strategic lead and direction for English at Holbrook. They ‘fly the flag’ for their subject by supporting colleagues in their teaching, keep themselves informed aboutcurrent developments in the subject, take the lead in policy development. By producing and overseeing schemes of work they ensure progression of skills and continuity throughout the school in all areas of English, working closely with other subject leads to identify cross-curricular links. Work with other schools and the wider community enables the English subject lead to ensure that extension activities and real life learning experiences are high on the agenda.

We are successful because

Here are some examples that show how our curriculum design has impacted on our pupils:

1. Every year we celebrate poetry, every pupil in the school enthuisatically learns a poem off by heart at home and they recite it to their class. ‘Winning’ pupils, chosen by their classmates, perform their poetry in a whole school assembly and in front of their family members.
2. End of key stage results in KS2 for English July 2025  were above national for expected and greater depth in Reading and Writing (above at expected in Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling)
3. End of key stage results in KS2 for English July 2024  were above national for expected and greater depth in Reading, Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling (above at expected in Writing)
4. Year 1 Phonics Screening Results- 2025 was above national (Holbrook- 89%/ National 81%)
5. Year 1 Phonics Screening Results- 2024 was above national (Holbrook- 92%/ National 80%)
6. Pupil perception questioning and learning walks regularly demonstrate that children throughout the school are passionate about reading and English. They speak enthusiastically about the texts that they read to support them with their learning.
7. Children as young as 5 are able to read schema words such as ‘metamorphosis’ and can use these academically challenging words in context.
8. Year 5 pupils write high quality persuasive speeches aimed at selling a new local dish to an audience as part of their Suffolk Dish Project which involves a visit to learn about the work of a local food business, Suffolk Food Hall.

Click below for our Progression of Skills, Knowledge, Understanding and Vocabulary documents. These sequencing documents show how knowledge builds from EYFS year by year to the end of Y6 so that children know more and remember more.