Written by: Alex Henson
Primary Teacher (Assistant Head of Primary, Whole Primary, Teaching & Learning)
Class texts and the Primary Curriculum @ ISPH
At ISPH, we nurture a whole-school love of language and a confidence with words, both spoken and written. As such, we believe that placing high quality children’s literature (class texts) at the heart of teaching and learning is imperative to the delivery of our curriculum. Our Primary Curriculum at ISPH is designed in such a way that enables all the teaching and learning, in English and across the curriculum, to be centred around one text either per term or per half term.
Each text has been thoughtfully chosen to complement each of our International Primary Curriculum (IPC) units. For example, The Iron Man by Ted Hughes is the perfect accompaniment to our Year 4 IPC Science topic on ‘How Humans Work’, whilst in Year 6, Viking Boy by Tony Bradman provides an action-packed blend of historical adventure and fantasy that neatly links with their IPC History topic on past civilisations – ‘The Great, the Bold and the Brave’. The class text can be seen as the ‘glue’ that holds each unit of learning together and provides the thematic links needed to spark children’s curiosity and imagination and raise engagement in both English and the wider curriculum.
Using class texts for teaching and learning
In English lessons, our class texts are used as a stimulus for the teaching of different writing text types, both narrative and non-narrative. This deep engagement with quality literary texts as a context for writing facilitates improved writing outcomes and accelerated progress amongst the students in terms of language, grammar and creativity.
Each class text has a variety of writing outcomes that allow the children to be exposed to the full range of writing types outlined in the English National Curriculum and the language features associated with these. This may mean children learn how to write a persuasive text, a set of instructions, poetry, a balanced argument or their own narrative based on a chapter or episode within the selected text.
For example, Gawain’s quest through the mountains in the Year 4 class text Gawain and the Green Knight, taught as part of the IPC unit ‘Explorers and Adventurers’, inspired the writing of biographical recounts about famous mountaineers, as well as making way for the concurrent study of mountain environments in their IPC Geography lessons (part of the Key Stage 2 National Curriculum for Geography).
In Year 1, a friendly little creature’s journey to Earth in Beegu by Alexis Deacon inspires the writing of persuasive letters, before children innovate their own narrative based on the story, thematically linking with their IPC topic on people, places and cultures entitled ‘Time Travellers’.
Wider impact
Children develop a genuine enjoyment for reading through this curriculum approach, as they are deeply immersed in a text as part of a holistic learning journey; their learning across the curriculum is truly embedded within a language-rich context. The use of high quality children’s literature in this way creates powerful opportunities to foster meaningful links across subject disciplines and supports the delivery of a thematic, broad and rigorous Primary curriculum that emphasises the importance of high quality narratives and one which ultimately raises engagement and attainment in language, vocabulary, reading and writing.
We want our students to become confident, happy and enthusiastic readers and writers with a deep understanding of the rich mechanics of language and narrative, with all the benefits this brings.
