English
COMMUNICATE, EXPRESS, CREATE
We teach English to develop children’s love of reading, writing and discussion. We want children to read avidly, write with accuracy and flair and express themselves effectively and confidently in spoken word.
As a school, we are committed to high quality teaching and learning of English; having good literacy skills is vital. We strongly believe in equipping children with the necessary skills and confidence that they will need for later life. We promote high standards of English by developing a strong knowledge of the spoken and written word and igniting a love of literature through widespread reading for pleasure. To achieve this aim, we teach the programmes of study from the new National Curriculum (September 2014) which are split into:
- Spoken Language
- Reading
- Writing
In Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and Key Stage 1, we use Read, Write Inc. Phonics (Ruth Miskin) to teach early reading and writing. From Year 2 onwards, the children continue with daily reading and writing sessions. A structured handwriting approach is taught throughout the school and Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling lessons help to secure basic skills.
Read, Write Inc. Phonics
To teach early reading skills, we use a synthetic phonics scheme called Read, Write Inc.; the programme gets children reading quickly, accurately and fluently. Every child’s progress is tracked through ongoing assessment and children are grouped by their current reading confidence and fluency, so they all learn rapidly and at the right level. Lots of partner-work means that every child participates in the whole lesson. The programme develops from the forty-four initial phonemes that the children need to know, moving on to blending, segmenting and looking at graphemes for spelling.
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English-in-our-School | [pdf 520KB] |
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Reading
To be a reader means much more than just being able to decode a book, so when a child can decode a text, we then focus on the skills needed to be a real reader.
We love reading here at Saint Lawrence! After a strong foundation of phonics in the Early Years, our children move on from learning to read, to reading to learn. We encourage children to read with fluency, choosing high quality texts to inspire them and grow a love of reading.
Throughout the Wrens, Starlings and Woodpeckers, the focus for the reading learning is fluency. We see fluency as the bridge between decoding and comprehension of more complex texts and so we focus on this essential skill. Children read passages of text over a number of days, sometimes marking the text to help with this. A fluent reader has three main skills:
- accuracy (they read the words correctly)
- automaticity (they read words automatically and with an effortless, appropriate speed)
- prosody (they read with appropriate stress and intonation)
Readers with these skills are proficient and demonstrate high levels of comprehension. Our children are read to every day - using a series of highly engaging texts, they have the opportunity to hear modelled reading regualrly and they practice reading texts repeatedly. These ingredients grow engaged readers.
Throughout school, there is also an expectation that children read at home each evening to practise their fluency and develop reading stamina.
Writing
Our long-term plan for writing is carefully designed to provide a range of writing opportunities. Examples include: biographies; poetry; newspaper reports; persuasive letters; diaries; narratives and non-chronological reports. The use of memorable experiences alongside a modelled structure of sentence writing enables all children to be successful in building writing over time.
Throughout our teaching programme, the essential spoken language, reading and writing skills are taught, often building up to a finished written piece; e.g. in some history learning called ‘Tomb Raiders’, children will read a book called ‘Secrets of a Sun King’ by Emma Carroll to give them an understanding of what life was like when Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun. From this, and other sources of information, the children will write news reports about the discovery of the tomb and thoughtful discussion texts about whether it was morally right to open it in the first place.
Using other subject areas as a context for writing gives greater purpose and a chance for children to showcase their skills.
Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation
Following our Read Write Inc. programme, children from Year 2 upwards continue with their spelling teaching, focusing on both key spelling patterns and rules and unfamiliar ‘tricky’ words. Grammar and punctuation teaching is integrated within English lessons to ensure that the concepts taught have a real-life context for the children. Learning spelling patterns is a part of our spelling and word investigations each week.
Handwriting
At Saint Lawrence School, we teach handwriting by linking closely with the Read, Write Inc. Phonics scheme. Handwriting is taught progressively and begins in EYFS where children are taught single-letter formation. It is not until they are ready that children are introduced to a simple, cursive, joined handwriting style. The joined style we have adopted is easy to join and not made complicated by additional loops or swirls. The charts below show the letters grouped according to how they are formed:
