At St Michael’s, we aim to provide our children with secure knowledge and basic skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing in order to access the wider curriculum, achieved through:

• Providing opportunities to discuss their work and the work of others. Learning how to listen, understand and respond are key skills in all areas of the curriculum, so time is spent developing these skills in English lessons.
• Providing quality texts and frequent opportunities to read for pleasure and learn the necessary skills to decode words and comprehend sentences. 
• Providing opportunities to think as a writer: initially to ‘read as a writer’ by unpicking examples of quality texts of all genre types and unpicking the strategies authors have used; then to ‘write as a writer’, using this learnt knowledge and the skills that they have acquired.

By the time they leave St Michael’s, we aim for our pupils to be confident and enthusiastic speakers, readers and writers, so they can take the necessary knowledge and skills to secondary school and beyond.