Intent
 

At Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Primary School we believe that a quality Literacy (English) curriculum should develop children’s love of reading, writing and discussion and ensure that they leave school fluent in the fundamentals of reading, writing, speaking and listening.  High quality English should challenge as well as inspire in pupils a love of literature, a broad knowledge of literature and genres.

Our children come to school with different life experiences and levels of socio economic status staff ensure enrichment is as the heart of our curriculum. Enrichment opportunities include; visitors, experiences to improve learning and extend beyond the classroom to curriculum trips. Such trips allow children to gain hands on experiences giving them the opportunities to develop good language skills, which are applied back to learning.

As a school we understand the development of language is fundamental to our children in enabling them to access all other areas of the curriculum. Staff encourage precision in vocabulary modelling Standard-English throughout school and children work hard to reflect this. Enhancing vocabulary is embedded across English and all other subjects and teachers strive to provide opportunities where language development is promoted, utilising working walls and knowledge organiser with subject specific vocabulary enabling children to access all other areas of the curriculum with confidence.

We adopt a holistic approach to ‘reading for pleasure’. All staff model positive attitudes to reading and can reshape tasks to guide the children as readers. Children have access to quality texts and teaching to ensure that English is delivered in an engaging way tailored to the needs of all children in our classes. We aim for all children to reach their full potential through a literacy/topic based approach, when suitable, offering a broad and balanced curriculum.

Implementation

Through adhering to the statutory guidance of the 2014 National Curriculum, our English teaching aims to::

• provide a language rich environment in which children can interpret vocabulary in context
• develop a love of reading, encouraging children to read in their free time and at home
• ensure children read fluently and with good understanding
• expose children to a wide range of literature developing an awareness of genres
• teach children the writing skills needed to write confidently for a range of purposes and audience
• ensure children can use spelling, punctuation and grammar effectively across their writing.
• Allow children to gain confidence in their speaking and listening skills through classroom debates and opportunities for formal presentation
  
  We have a novel based English curriculum and have been careful to select a wide range of novels taken from the 100 books to read from each phase (EYFS, KS1, LKS2 and UKS2). Across the curriculum, there is a mix of classic & modern fiction, historical & fantasy as well as non-fiction, instructional/information texts, which we have carefully linked specific writing genres to, in order to ensure coverage of the full English curriculum. The intention being that all children, regardless of attainment level, can be immersed in the same high quality literature and the discussions that these texts promote. The teacher and other children can model intonation, volume and expression with the expected impact that children become more confident readers. The wide range of vocabulary can be heard in context and the teachers can pitch their questioning appropriately insisting on high quality responses with evidenced based explanations. High quality written work should follow as the children have a good, strong knowledge of the vocabulary, the characters, the setting and the plot.
  Big write sessions are completed for the children to apply their written skills and knowledge in a difference context- this could be based on a picture, video clip, book extract or songs/poem etc.
  In KS1 children follow the Read, Write Inc. scheme of work daily.

Impact

The English curriculum at OLQP is designed to provide children with learning opportunities that reflect the breadth and balance of contexts outlined in the National Curriculum to fulfil this we use a variety of teaching and learning styles in our English lessons.

• All pupils will be given the opportunity to, apply and understand their knowledge of grammar and punctuation taught in individual lessons and applied to their writing.
• As a school we utilise quality texts to encourage a love of reading and develop a read to writing process.
• We offer children the opportunity to access a wide variety of literature to stimulate writing opportunities
• Children take part in role-play and discussions, and they present their work to the class, practising their speaking and listening skills.
• We recognise the fact that there are children of widely different abilities in all classes and we provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We achieve this by: 

1. Setting common tasks which are open-ended and can have a variety of responses;
2. Setting tasks of increasing difficulty;
3. Providing resources and support to suit the ability of the child;
4. Offering the opportunity for mixed ability pupil led activities where children gain support from peers;
5. Peer assessment.

Roald Dahl Day

The children in Foundation had a fun packed day celebrating Roald Dahl Day. They enjoyed listening to his stories and all came to school dressed in green ready for their story 'The enormous crocodile'

National story telling week 

(31st January - 8th February 2026)

This school year we will be celebrating national story telling. In Queen of Peace, each year group will be given a token to use in our vending machine. They will choose a book together and read it as a class. 

Our Visit from Levi Tafari

Our whole school enjoyed a wonderful assembly from the author Levi Tafari who told us about his life and performed some of his fantastic poems. We all had the chance to join and it put a smile on all our faces. Levi then delivered workshops with our Year 4/5 and Year 6 classes. 

KS1 Visit to the Book Shop

As part of our author visit the children in Key Stage 1 took a trip the a local book store (Kingsley & Co.) where they joined in with an exciting workshop and had the opportunity to all choose a book of their own to take home. It was a wonderful afternoon and we can't wait to go back and visit again!