English
Communication is a right, not a privilege
Our vision at Mossgate Primary School is for our children to become articulate and confident communicators both verbally and through writing.
The ability to communicate effectively is an essential ingredient to both success in school and beyond.
“Your voice is your most powerful tool; use it to speak your truth, share your ideas and make a difference” - Oprah Winfrey
Oracy
Oracy skills should underpin a curriculum and be at the core of everything we do. At Mossgate, promoting purposeful talk right from a child’s first days in our school is a key focus. Our commitment to child-led learning in EYFS and the continuation of a continuous provision approach across Key Stage One opens up a wealth of opportunities to have back and forth conversations with peers and our highly skilled staff throughout each day. Talk is used for describing, retelling, explaining, instructing, performing…the possibilities are endless.
This creates a firm foundation for Key Stage Two to continue to build on through opportunities to widen children’s use of spoken language for different purposes including discussion, debate and presenting, whilst learning more about the differences between formal and informal language.
As part of our continual drive for improvement, developing Oracy across the entire curriculum is an area identified for school improvement following a period of time working on reviewing and refining our approaches to teaching reading and writing – both of which are intertwined in the development of articulate and confident communicators.
“Reading and Writing float on a sea of talk” - James Britton
Reading
At Mossgate, we believe that books and reading open the door to new worlds for all our children to discover.
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr Seuss
Our EYFS & Key Stage One classrooms have their own dedicated reading areas so that children can read for pleasure throughout the school day and Book Lending Libraries are available for children to select books from to take home.
In Key Stage Two, we have a wonderful well-stocked library where children can browse and select books of their choice. Key Stage Two classrooms display books linked to current curriculum themes, the class novel and class texts being studied.
The teaching of reading takes a high priority at Mossgate, with reading lessons taking place every day. A wide range of high-quality texts are chosen to motivate children as readers (& writers), to expose children to a wealth of interesting and sophisticated vocabulary & language structures, and to provide a platform to teach core reading skills needed to confidently read and understand texts appropriate for their age.
In the EYFS & Key Stage One, we teach the alphabetic code through our bespoke systematic synthetic phonics programme (further information can be found on a separate page - Phonics & Early Reading).
Key features of our approach to teaching reading include:
- Daily reading lessons including a “read for pleasure” lesson each week
- Regular read aloud sessions – sharing the class novel/story/poetry
- Key learning clearly identified for each year group with..
- Reading Superhero characters linked to each strand of key learning to support children in cueing into the skills & processes needed
- Daily focus within lessons on teaching reading fluency using a range of approaches including: teacher modelling, choral, echo & paired reading
- Lots of opportunities to focus on developing vocabulary using the STAR approach (Select, Teach, Activate, Review)
- Regular work on developing comprehension strategies to understand texts using engaging approaches such as: drama, role-play, paired talk, quizzes & matching/sequencing activities & games
“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write” – Samuel Johnson
Writing
At Mossgate, the teaching of writing is also hugely important and writing units are carefully planned around a high-quality text that has been thoughtfully selected to engage the children as writers (& readers) by providing the style, structure and language features required to support the children in developing the key writing skills for their age. Often, texts will also link (if appropriate) to the wider curriculum, thus enabling deeper learning to take place when connections are made and knowledge & understanding is applied.
Key features of our approach to teaching writing include:
- High-quality text-based writing units that follow the Lancashire teaching sequence & skills model
- Key learning clearly identified for each year group which is sequenced progressively, with new knowledge & skills building on prior learning
- Daily English lessons focused on working towards scaffolded & independent writing outcomes which include work on grammar within the context of the writing being studied
- A range of writing opportunities within a unit including: shared, modelled, guided, collaborative, paired & independent writing
- Weekly grammar lessons
- Daily spelling lessons
- Weekly handwriting lesson
- Working walls to support learning by displaying key features, WAGOLL models, shared writing examples, STAR vocabulary, etc
“You can make anything by writing” – C.S. Lewis
Mrs Bryony Booth - English Subject Leader
Updated 2025