English - St Anne Stanley School

English Lead – Mr Lineton

Vision

At St Anne (Stanley) CE Primary School, our school vision is to provide our children and families with a safe, welcoming and inclusive environment where they are valued and can flourish. With God’s guidance, we all come together to learn in a loving Christian community, where we strive for our children to become well-prepared and confident members of our school, church parish and the wider community.

Our curriculum vision for English reflects this aim to be prepared for life and learning. Through our learning and teaching in English, we develop children’s ability as assured speakers, readers and writers, who are confident in using these skills across the wider curriculum throughout their school career and in later life. Consequently, we strive to develop a love of language, vocabulary, writing and a passion for reading. A systematic programme of teaching and learning ensures that each child reach their potential in speaking and listening, reading and writing. As a school, we strive to ensure that work in speaking and listening, reading and writing is fully integrated. Our aim is for all children to learn to speak confidently and listen to what others have to say; read and write independently and with enthusiasm; use ambitious and accurate language to explore their own experiences and imaginary worlds.

Reading is central to our curriculum vision for English and we strive to ensure that all children will become successful, accurate and fluent readers by the end of Key Stage Two. We believe this is achievable through a combination of strong, high quality, discrete phonics teaching; whole class shared reading to develop vocabulary and language comprehension; and developing reading accuracy, fluency and comprehension skills through independent reading practice, guided reading and whole class sessions. We also promote reading as a constant in pupils lives; we encourage children read both at school and at home and see reading as inspiring and pleasurable. All of this helps to promote an authentic ‘Reading for Pleasure’ culture, which we constantly promote.

g myself in stories and have treasured books ever since.

My top four children’s books of all time (in no particular order):

Elidor

by Alan Garner

Charlotte’s Web

by E. B. White

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

by J.K. Rowling

Danny, Champion of the World

by Roald Dahl

Some of my favourite grown-up books that I have read in recent years (in no particular order):

The Color Purple

by Alice Walker

To Kill a Mockingbird

by Harper Lee

1984

by George Orwell

A Thousand Splendid Suns

by Khaled Hosseini

Red or Dead

by David Peace

‘I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.’

(Roald Dahl)

‘Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.’

(Mason Cooley)

‘The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that

you learn, the more places you’ll go.’

(Dr. Seuss)

If there is one piece of advice I could give to anyone, young or old, it is… READ!

Mr. Lineton (2025)

For EYFS Statutory Guidance please refer to Areas of Learning within the above document which link directly to English which are Communication and Language, Physical Development and Literacy.

Other useful sites we use…

Reading Ambassadors

Our Reading Ambassadors are an important part of our learning community. These volunteers, from Year Two up to Year Six, meet regularly with Mr. Lineton (English Lead) to discuss everything about reading and books in our school.

So far this year, our Reading Ambassadors have devised and run competitions to encourage reading for pleasure in all classes, encouraged and advised classmates on great books to read and have helped run our Autumn Term Book Fair. Our Reading Ambassadors display outside the school hall has regular updated information about our latest projects.

*Click the link below to read our World Book Day story, written by the classes of St. Anne Stanley.

World Book Day Story – The Mystery of the Missing Creativity Orb