English
Statement of Intent
Our intent at Parkdale is that every child develops a love of English and becomes a confident reader, writer and speaker.
Reading
Reading is a common thread throughout all areas of the curriculum. Here at Parkdale we provide children with lots of opportunities to be exposed to high quality texts both to support the teaching of English and in Shared Reading. We regularly schedule in Reading for Pleasure and our Reading Corners are a key focus point in our classrooms. Children in Early Years and KS1 learn phonics through the DfE approved programme ‘Phonics Bug’.
Writing
All our writing outcomes have a clear Audience and Purpose. It is vital that children are writing for a real reason, it is very important that they know that their writing is going to be read by someone. All our units of work culminate in a high quality final published outcome. During the writing process children have the opportunity to become saturated in relevant high quality texts and begin to deconstruct what elements join combine to create this genre. The children discover and dabble with grammatical features of the text and then begin to draft, edit and revise their final outcome. Children are given freedom to decide how they would like to present their final outcome.
Phonics
Parkdale has a robust and rigorous approach to phonics. Our chosen validated systematic synthetic phonics programme (SSP) is Bug Club Phonics. It teaches children grapheme phoneme correspondence in order to blend phonemes into spoken words and segment spoken words into phonemes. By ensuring high-quality phonics teaching we want to give all children a solid base upon which to build as they progress through school, as well as help children to develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information.
For more information please see the attached Phonics Overview further down this page for a detailed breakdown of Phonics across the school from Nursery to KS2.
English Notices
National Poetry Day
Click on the picture to explore the National Poetry Day site for some inspiration.
National Story Telling Week
To celebrate National Story Telling Week in school we did a reader swap! Each teacher went to a different class and read their favourite story with them, which was kept a secret until the day. We also used our daily ‘Reading for Pleasure’ sessions to share and explore different genres of books and to visit the school library. We had so much fun celebrating our love of reading.
Class Reading Champion
Who has read lots at home? Who has shown improvements? Who has read aloud with enthusiasm? Who will your teacher choose this half-term to be their Class Reading Champion? It could be YOU!
Reading for Pleasure
We are excited to invigorate Reading For Pleasure with our KS2 Books To Read Before You Leave…Booklets. Fantastic quality texts to suit all tastes and genres. Read, read and more reading to get your Bronze, Silver and Gold achievements. See below for more info!
Books to Read Before You Leave Y3
Books To Read Before You Leave Y4
Books To Read Before You Leave Y5
Books To Read Before You Leave Y6
Poetry Recitals
Find a little taster of some of the fantastic poems that our children learnt and recited during Poetry Week in our English Gallery . We loved the variety of poems and choices made by our KS2 children. Enjoy!
Curriculum Information
Subject Review
Subject on a Page
Phonics Overview
Books To Read Information Letter
Useful Links
Love My Books Site
Great website to help choose age and genre related books and activities to go with each one.
Book Trust Site
A great site for getting children and families reading.
Love Reading 4 Kids Site
Another good site to help choose books and see which ones are up for awards. You can even read exerts from the book to see if you like it!
English Gallery
Zana Fraillon launches World Book Day at Parkdale Primary
We were so lucky to have Zana Fraillon, author of Wisp, The Lost Soul Atlas and The Bone Sparrow launch our World Book day 2021. She answered author questions from our children and set us a writing challenge based on the brilliant book Wisp.
Take a look at some of our ‘Wisp’ inspired writing!



