The Intent of our English Curriculum at Holy Family

At Holy Family, English is the core of our curriculum. Across each stage of our education in school, pupils are provided with opportunities to develop and apply their spoken and written English within a balanced, inspiring and creative curriculum.

Reading is the master skill of school and we aim to foster a life-long love of reading in all our children, developing avid readers who can access and appreciate our rich literacy heritage. We aim to provide a wealth of powerful reading experiences to fuel our pupil’s imaginations and develop their knowledge of the world in which they live. We prioritise the development of reading fluency to ensure that by the end of their primary education, all pupils who at Holy Family are able to read with confidence, enabling them to be successful in their next stage of education and beyond.

A key aim for our pupils is effective communication of ideas and emotions, both orally and in written form. Spoken language is paramount at Holy Family, forming foundations for reading and writing. By immersing our pupils in high-quality texts and language-rich environments, we aim for our children to be able to describe their world, expressing their views and opinions articulately. We want our children to use discussion and debate to communicate and further their learning across the curriculum, elaborating and explaining their thinking and ideas. We strive to enable all pupils to develop a love of writing and the confidence to explore their imagination, nurturing our pupils’ motivation to write with purpose and with pleasure.

We believe that a secure knowledge of the English language is crucial to a high quality education and will give the children of Holy Family, the tools they need to contribute positively to the life of the school, their local community and the wider environment as a member of society.

At Holy Family, we value the development of our children's vocabulary. All staff have completed Word Aware training, which focusses on widening children's vocabulary and enabling them to use adventurous word choices in their spoken language and written work.

At Holy Family, the children have generated huge amounts of their favourite words. They have gathered these words from books, cross curricula lessons, thesauruses and words they use in spoken language. The children will continue to add words to our vocabulary tree and they will be challenged to use them verbally and in their writing.