English
English is a vital part of the curriculum and impacts all other subjects. Children are taught effective communication skills through speaking and listening, as well as reading and writing. Reading and writing go hand in hand; great writers need to read a range of genres to give them a broad range of vocabulary and ideas to use within their own writing. We aim to inspire children to read and write independently, skilfully and for enjoyment! We are passionate about giving children the fundamental skills to let them achieve later in life.
Reading
We are very enthusiastic about reading. We believe reading is for both a purpose (for information) and for pleasure, and we continually share our love of books and promote a positive reading culture.
There are two equally important elements to be able to read effectively: working out what the print on the page says (decoding) and working out what those words mean (comprehension).
We teach reading in a variety of different ways. Daily phonics, planned from the Little Wandle scheme, is taught in early years and continues through to year 2; occasionally this continues higher up in the school if a child needs it.
Each class then has a discrete reading and writing lesson each day, using the Power of Reading text to underpin the development of all skills. Individual reading practice sessions also occur across the whole school where books are discussed individually in depth.
We also use VIPERS to practice our reading skills:
Vocabulary
Inference
Prediction
Explain
Retrieval
Summarise
We value the skill of reading out loud and children in all year groups across the school are heard read regularly. Our libraries have been auditted in both schools and we have lots of wonderful, brand new books for the children to enjoy and be challenged by. The books have colour coded stickers which relate to the book band progession document below.
We strongly urge parents to hear their children read at home regularly in all age groups. It is vital to support their reading by asking them questions about the texts, to ensure their understanding. We believe children need to be taught to read and recognise print in a range of books and other sources such as magazines, menus, comics, signs, food labels, etc. The wider experiences the better!
Writing
Writing involves many elements such as forming ideas into sentences, spelling, handwriting and understanding grammar and punctuation.
It begins with a strong focus on talk and a strong focus on phonics. Children are given opportunities to work on speaking in sentences, telling stories, explaining and justifying their ideas and building their vocabulary. They work daily on recognising the sounds that letters and groups of letters make and playing segmenting and syllable games. We encourage children to have confidence to make independent choices and believe they are writers and value their first attempts. The first step is mark making – exciting places are set up to encourage children to want to write such as trays of glitter, water on outdoor paving slabs, cars in paint, etc. This develops into letters, words and sentences as children’s learning grows. As we give them steps to help them improve, their skills grow. Phonics is taught in discrete sessions daily and applied in English lessons. Children are also taught to spell irregular common words known as high frequency words. The current English National Curriculum includes a focus on grammar, and children are taught grammar from the very beginning of school. We teach this through games and then apply it within our writing lessons. Children need to have correct language modelled to them.
Correct letter formation pencil grip and handwriting are also modelled. Children initially air-write letters with wands saying the patterns to remember them. We also do activities which build up the children's fine motor skills in order to develop much needed muscles for writing.
Across the year, children in each class work on writing different genres such as instructions, simple poems, narrative and non-fiction reports. Children learn increased sound and letter combinations and increased common spelling words. They learn to use punctuation, add detail and extend their sentences. We choose engaging topics to write about such as how to make a potion, postcards from the seaside, leaflets to persuade children to visit a new town, letters to visiting aliens, descriptions of dragons and more!
In Key Stage two, children learn even more genres such as mystery stories, plays, myths, shape poems and biographies. Children learn to improve the quality of their sentences by playing with clauses, an increased range of conjunctions, adverbial phrases, more complex sentence structures and experimenting with more complex punctuation. Phonics teaching migrates to teaching more combinations of letter patterns, along with spelling rules for which words use which, and increased rules for adding prefixes and suffixes.
Power of Reading
The Power of Reading (PoR) is about teaching English through using high quality books and creative teaching approaches (such as art and drama). This approach aims to engage and motivate children in the learning. It also enables children to deepen their understanding of texts and provides a meaningful context for writing. The PoR helps to develop inference and deduction and comprehension skills. It also involves children regularly writing in different genres and creates a more cohesive learning experience. A quality text will be used as the basis for learning over several weeks.
English is at the heart of the curriculum and the texts facilitate a range of exciting cross curricular work. For example Goodnight Mr Tom and Rose Blanche enhanced work on World War 2.