English

English at Maple Court Academy

Intent:

At Maple Court Academy, we aim to nurture the aspirations of every child, empowering them to achieve their dreams. We believe this journey begins with a love for fluent, confident reading. Our curriculum is designed around inspiring, high-quality texts that span a diverse range of genres, delivered by a staff team deeply committed to literacy. We equip our pupils with the essential skills and knowledge to learn from what they read, preparing them for future education and life beyond the classroom. By immersing children in literature, we bridge the gap between reading and writing—fostering a style that is creative, powerful, and accurate. At the heart of everything we do is a dedication to vocabulary; by prioritising language, we unlock independent learning and open windows of opportunity for every child’s future.

The Subject Leader:

Hello, I’m Mrs Cadman, the English Lead here at Maple Court Academy. I am incredibly passionate about ensuring every child in our school learns to read fluently, accurately, and with confidence. Alongside this, I strive to empower our pupils to become creative, competent, and expressive writers who take pride in their work.

In my role across the academy, I strive to set a high standard for literacy, ensuring that every member of our community models excellence in speaking, listening, reading, and writing. My primary focus is the delivery of a high-quality, sequential English curriculum that fosters fluency, confidence, and a genuine love of literacy in every year group. I am dedicated to prioritising reading as the gateway to the wider curriculum, ensuring our children benefit from a coherently planned journey that equips them with essential life skills. While subject knowledge across the academy is strong, I am committed to continuous improvement; I provide bespoke support and high-quality CPD, drawing on internal expertise, external training, and collaboration across our Trust.

The curriculum:

English is at the heart of everything we do here at Maple Court Academy. Our curriculum is designed to be ambitious and meet the needs of all pupils through tailored scaffolding approaches. Taking the objectives from the National Curriculum, we deliver a sequence of sessions for English which marry reading and writing together. Starting with ‘book talk’, the children are taught how to predict, retrieve, infer, understand language, summarise and give justifications for their answers. This approach enables the children to gain lots of reading skills while becoming familiar with authorial style which leads into the teaching of writing. The writing process begins with

‘immersion’ where the children will be exposed to what they are expected to achieve (through a WAGOLL resource), giving them knowledge of structure and organisation and writing style for the genre. This is also the stage where we explore and gather vocabulary; therefore, we give the children the opportunity to get to grips with language used in the WAGOLL and use different ways to collect their own for their own piece. A key grammar skill for the genre of writing will then be looked at with the children and applied in their own sentences. Children then have the opportunity to plan their final piece in a way that is appropriate to the task before writing their final piece. As stated in the National Curriculum, we prioritise drafting and editing and consistently include this within the final steps of our sequence of sessions.

Demonstrating that reading is a priority across the academy, high quality texts have been carefully selected to ensure engagement of all pupils. Where applicable, these texts are linked directly to the foundation subjects. Using texts which link to our topics ensures our children are fully immersed in their topic and this in turn moves children towards a deep level of understanding where they use and apply skills and knowledge in different areas. We carefully choose texts throughout the course of the year which cover a range of genres: our long term and medium-term planning and guided reading journeys ensure that every genre is covered, covering classic fiction, historical fiction and science fiction to name a few, poetry and many non-fiction text types. As an academy, we also place high value on picture books and the opportunities they bring right through to Year 6.

As vocabulary is a key priority across our school in all subjects, in order to develop our children’s understanding and use of a variety of vocabulary, we use our Word Aware scheme. This is a vocabulary thread throughout our sequence that enables our children to explore the meaning of new words and develop understanding within context.

EYFS:

In EYFS, children learn how to read through the early reading programme Little Wandle. In the Autumn term, children learn Phase 2 and some Phase 3 phonemes and graphemes. They learn how to read and write CVC words, which builds onto children learning to read and write phrases and simple sentences. By the end of the school year, children develop their accuracy and fluency when reading short stories with known sounds and tricky words. They develop their writing stamina and are expected to write at least three sentences at the end of the year to help prepare them for Year 1. Reading and writing opportunities are provided in the continuous provision – both inside and outside – to allow children to practise the skills that they have learnt.  

Assessment for learning:

Assessment at Maple Court Academy is ‘live’ and ongoing. We use retrieval practice to anchor new learning and employ strategies like whiteboard work and partner talk to check for

understanding throughout every lesson. Our Active Developmental Marking (ADM) policy ensures that feedback is immediate—misconceptions are caught and corrected during the task rather than after the lesson. This formative data informs our daily planning, while our termly moderation and regular Senior leadership monitoring ensure that our summative judgments remain accurate and rigorous.”

Pupil voice: