Overall Intent Statement

At Cottingley Village Primary School, English is the foundation of our whole school curriculum. Our intent is to deliver an English Curriculum to enthuse, enable and empower every single child’s reading, writing and oral communication skills, allowing them to succeed, make sense of the world and shape their place within it. It is also essential that our approach to teaching phonics and reading is accessible to all learners, regardless of background. We passionately believe that teaching children to read and write independently, as quickly as possible, is one of the core purposes of a primary school. These fundamental skills not only hold the keys to the rest of the curriculum but also have a huge impact on children’s self-esteem and future life chances. Early reading is taught through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme.

As a result, English is a core driver in our Learning Challenge Curriculum. With carefully selected high quality texts, whose purpose is to inspire our children to become avid, fluent and independent readers, our aim is to widen their knowledge and experiences and instil  in them the determination to question, explore and investigate. Our core texts provide the bedrock for our school-wide strategic approach to developing vocabulary and Oracy.  Comprising of a bank of explicitly taught words for each Year Group, revisited and built upon from EYFS to Year Six, these words are identified for their strength in transferability and their potential to develop the clarity of our children’s communication skills. Writing challenges, each with their own purposeful ‘Mission’, progressively develop the children’s ability to plan, compose, transcribe and evaluate. Grammar and spelling are weaved through the teaching of reading and writing, ensuring our children are flexible in adapting the style and context of writing for a specific audience and purpose. 

Together with our core ethos of ‘Learning to Learn’, our sense of pride, our high expectations, and our rigour,  our intent is to ensure that all children at CVPS are equipped with the necessary literate skills to access knowledge across different subjects, form concepts, connect ideas and express themselves with a clear, coherent and articulate voice.