English

At St Anthony’s we endeavour to provide children with an ambitious English education that will teach children to speak, read and write fluently to enable them to effectively communicate. Through our progressive and coherent curriculum, we teach the basic skills and provide a rich, engaging and meaningful learning environment in which we aim to develop children’s love of reading, writing, speaking and listening skills. These skills will lay the foundations for children to thrive in all other areas of the curriculum and prepare them for society.

Writing

At St Anthonys, we aim to ensure that all children learn a love of writing and develop confidence to share and communicate their ideas effectively through the written word. We believe that high expectations and encouragement will create a confident and capable writer. Children at St Anthony’s will develop the tools they need to become a proficient writer and develop a genuine love of writing.

English Working Walls

Speaking and Listening

At St Anthony’s we believe that all children have a voice. We want the children to be confident, articulate speakers and effective listeners. We understand the upmost importance of developing communication skills from the moment that they join our school.  Focusing on speaking and listening skills are crucial and are embedded throughout the curriculum.  Developing spoken language, including vocabulary is crucial for the academic progress of all children.

Reading

‘A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.’

– George R.R. Martin

In St Anthonys, we know that reading unlocks so many opportunities, taking children beyond their own experiences. Therefore, we believe that learning to read is one the most important things your child will learn at our school. In each part of the children’s learning in our school, reading is taught, consolidated throughout the week. From right when the children begin in EYFS we want to foster them with a love of reading and texts which take them on a magical journey.

Reading Newsletters

VIPERS

World Book Day 2024

For World Book Day this year each class took part in decorating their classroom door based on a book of their choice. This could be the book that they are reading at the moment as a class or one they have read previously. All of the work that went onto the door was produced by our very talented children. Well done St Anthony’s!

National Story Telling Week

In EYFS, we celebrated story telling week by listening to lots of our favourite stories being read by different people in our school community such as Year 4 and 6, different teachers and Elaine our Head teacher.      

English is Nursery

Nursery have been reading different fairy tales.  We have created masks and used puppets and teddies to help us role play each story.  We also wrote wanted posters for the villains in each story.

English in Reception

Burglar Bill

We always love to give children a purpose for writing and getting them excited and wanting to write. The children were shocked to find out who had entered our classroom, they looked at the evidence being carefully to write down what they could find. Some children chose to make wanted posters to tell others what had happened. We have done lots of drama activities too, asking Burglar Bill questions and creating posters to get people to watch out. Some of us even decided to be news reporters and told the world what had happened.

Phonics

We love Fred from our phonics lessons and love in child initiated play choosing lots of phonics activities.  

English in Year 4

The Day the chairs went on strike!

Our chairs went on strike! We arrived on Monday morning to a letter from our chairs telling us they’ve had enough and that we would have to complete our work without them. We worked hard to write persuasive speeches explaining to the chairs why we needed them and why we were sorry for swinging on them.