The 2014 Primary Curriculum

What are the key changes for English?

An overview• 3 features: reading, including that for comprehension

and that for pleasure and an appreciation of our literary heritage though pose, poetry and plays;

• Writing, including the development of essential principles, written structures and expression of ideas;

• The importance of spoken language, to be encouraged through discussions and debates.

• The Programmes of Study specify requirements on a year by year basis with KS2 grouped into Lower/Upper.

Phonics fast and first• The Simple View of Reading continues to dominate the approach to early reading in KS1• The Phonics Check at 6 now embedded as part

of summative assessment in the summer term.

• Schools obliged to publish their results through RAISE database.

• With the new curriculum, synthetic phonics officially passes into the Programmes of Study at every year.

Spelling – year by year

• Year 1: compound words like ‘football, laptop; plurals of nouns and words with ‘s’ and ‘es’ endings as in ‘spends’ and ‘catches’; consonant spellings with ‘ph’ and ‘wh’ as in ‘dolphin’ and ‘which;’ vowel digraphs as in ‘lie’ and ‘pie,’ ‘chief’ and ‘thief.’

• Year 2: familiar homophones like ‘there’ and ‘their;’ possessive apostrophes such as ‘Megan’s’ or the ‘child’s,’ adding suffixes as in ‘cry, cries, crying’, ‘happy, happier, happiest.’

• Years 3 and 4: extended rules for prefixes and suffixes in regular as in ‘dis’ for ‘disappear’ and possessive plurals such as ‘girls’’ but ‘children’s;’ more complex homophones like ‘accept/except;’ and a number of key words that should be learnt including ‘separate,’ ‘conscience,’ ‘possess’

• Years 5 and 6: ‘able’ and ‘ible’ endings such as ‘considerable’ and ‘incredible;’ words with silent letters such as ‘lamb’ and ‘doubt;’ further complex homophones such as ‘ ascent/assent’ and ‘disinterested/uninterested’ plus that list of spelling words

Reading for Pleasure

• This aspiration whilst not new research still showing children’s experiences in reading enjoyment varies.

• The new curriculum clearly states the intention that children should read widely and voraciously for pleasure and for meaning.

• The new curriculum highlights the pivotal role of schools in ensuring that reading takes place beyond the school gates, stating ‘they should provide library facilities and set ambitious expectations for reading at home.’

Learning to love Grammar

Focus on Grammar

• A much deeper focus on learning grammar explicitly. Where the current curriculum requires that pupils be taught ‘some of the grammatical features of written standard English’ and learn to ‘consider’ language structure when composing their own texts, the new curriculum contains a long list of often complex grammatical concepts, punctuation and spelling rules that children will have to identify and label as well as use.

Recitation and debate

• The old curriculum valued drama as an important vehicle for children to explore and convey a range of situations, characters and emotions. The new curriculum relegates drama to ‘role-play’ as part of a wider assortment of oral performances that includes presentation, improvisation and debate.

• There is more emphasis on structure and convention.

• Pupils asked to organise their thoughts and ideas for the purposes of debate, discussion, explanation and narration.

• More around social awareness• Pulls out ‘gaining, maintaining and monitoring

the interest of the listener[s]’ as a separate objective.

Debra Myhill on readiness for New Curriculum

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XEUq70tc2E

Key Questions • Is there space in your timetable to focus on language

work?• Do make links between language and the teaching of

reading, writing and talk• Do you have a structured teaching programme in

place? • How confident are your staff in their subject

knowledge?• Are your resources engaging enough for the 21st C children• Are children’s parents as involved as they could be?

Self Help!

Ken Robinson

Changing Educational Paradigms

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsNVmOa5Pd4

• Lewes New School, Lewes, East Sussex