At St. Leonard's Primary School, we strive to provide our children with enriching and insuring learning experiences in English ensuring the highest standards of teaching to support all learners. 

The skills that are taught in English are embedded so children are life-long learners and prepared for the next stage in their education by being the best readers, writers and spellers they can be. 

At St Leonard's, we use FFT Success for All Phonics which is a complete systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme that has been validated by the Department for Education. The programme is aimed at nursery children upwards and our ambition is to enable success for all children and inspire a lifelong love of reading. 

We recognise that English skills are essential for progress throughout the curriculum therefore our teachers have ambitious expectations for every single individual. Tailoring challenging and supportive learning to every child is the basis of our teaching in English alongside providing rich and stimulating opportunities that engage and encourage our learners. 

We aim for our children to take ownership of their writing, embracing ambitious vocabulary and identifying purposeful and powerful grammar choices which elevate their writing and engage the reader. By providing the children with authentic audiences and genuine purpose, they become immersed in the writing experience completely. In conjunction with this, children are exposed to a range of texts that stimulate and captivate every individual, developing their depth of knowledge and promoting a love of reading with a deep understanding of authors' intent, atmosphere and the purpose of specific language choices. 

Below are our policies for Reading, Writing, Spelling and Phonics which outline how we deliver our curriculum, in conjunction with the National Curriculum, in English.