What does English learning look like at Kennedy School?
The English language is central to the learning of students at Kennedy School.
They learn through English, and they learn about English. The programme followed by class teachers is based on the ESF Scope and Sequence document for English, which in turn draws on IB documents and the ‘First Steps’ language resources. The programme is divided into 5 main strands, which are Reading, Writing, Speaking & Listening and Viewing and Presenting.
Whilst these strands have their own learning outcomes, in reality lessons taught draw on elements of different strands simultaneously. English is planned into the 6 Units of Inquiry taught in every year group each year, thereby ensuring integration of the majority of the English programme into the units. The exceptions to this are the phonics and spelling programmes (word level) and some of the structural/syntactic English (sentence level). For the teaching of text, teachers focus the students on purpose (or text type), thereby giving it a clear relevance to the unit, and meaningfulness to the students.