Our English Curriculum

Our English curriculum is well-sequenced, progressive, and ambitious, aiming for all children at Maple Grove to become confident and creative readers and writers equipped to succeed. The reading and writing curriculum spans from the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) to Year 6, aligning with the Early Years Framework and the National Curriculum. Expert resources support phonics, reading, and writing, enabling teachers to deliver high-quality lessons while reducing workload.

Maple Grove's Literary Curriculum offers a thematic, book-based approach focused on children's literature. It engages children in a literary world, fostering critical reading and an authorial style through diverse authors and texts in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. High-quality texts promote empathy and philosophical enquiry, boosting spoken language skills through structured debates and discussions.

By centring books, teachers utilise texts to meet national curriculum requirements, ensuring that learning has meaningful context. Grounding objectives, including grammar, in this context connects learning with relevance.

We strive for all writing to be authentic and purposeful, whether short or long, with clear audiences. High-quality books provide genuine reasons to write: to explain, persuade, inform, or instruct. We embed writing within texts or link it to broader themes.

Writing in role across genres is central to our method. We model appropriate tone and formality, guiding pupils on language choices for different contexts.

The Literary Curriculum covers the entire English Programme of Study for Key Stages 1 and 2 in Writing and Reading Comprehension, aligning with the 2021 Early Years Framework.

Objectives are revisited, giving children repeated chances to enhance their learning year-round and build on prior knowledge. This fosters deeper thinking and stronger skills.

Planning should be adapted to ensure all children fully engage with the curriculum.

Children explore over 100 literary texts and experience at least 90 significant authors throughout their education. At Maple Grove Primary School, reading and writing texts are meticulously mapped for each year group to ensure progression and curriculum coverage.

English Steps in progression

Reading

Information about how we teach phonics. When children have secured their phonics knowledge and can read fluently, they exit Little Wandle. They are taught to be confident, inquisitive readers through whole-class guided reading lessons that follow our guided reading curriculum. Our guided reading curriculum offers a variety of sequenced activities that guide children through entire books to enhance reading comprehension and develop critical readers. We utilise novels, poetry collections, and high-quality nonfiction books that relate to the Writing curriculum through themes. More information about how we teach reading can be found here.

Writing

The book-based Writing curriculum consists of texts and themes derived from a broad selection of high-quality and significant children’s literature, carefully chosen to engage, challenge, and assist children in becoming critical readers and confident, informed writers. All National Curriculum requirements concerning grammar, spelling, vocabulary, literary language, and composition are integrated, resulting in a variety of purposeful and stimulating shorter, longer, and extended writing outcomes with clear audience and purpose.

Enrichment books to support our literacy curriculum.