English

Teaching of Reading

Intent

At Edgar Sewter Primary School, we aim to foster a love of language and reading and, therefore, attach great importance to enabling our children to become fluent readers whilst promoting reading for enjoyment. We aim to develop independence and fluency in all readers to ensure a life-long love of reading and ensuring that they can all achieve their full potential across all areas of the curriculum.

We approach reading in three different ways; reading for pleasure, reading across the curriculum and teaching reading skills explicitly.

Implementation

In Key Stage One, children are developing their early reading skills through daily teaching of Phonics. (Further information can be found on the Phonics page). Children begin their teaching of reading lessons by learning to read decodable books, which tie in with their Phonics learning. The focus is on developing fluency. Children have the same text for a week; the reading is modelled to them on the Monday and tricky words are learnt. Then children work in groups to practise reading this book with the idea being that they are then fluent by the end of the week. Once children have developed their fluency skills (often in Year 2), they then move on to a reading session where comprehension skills are developed.

In Key Stage Two, whole class teaching of reading sessions take place daily. These are separate to, but may complement, English sessions. 

During the reading lesson, teachers offer a wide variety of genres to the children which include poems, fiction, non-fiction, recipes, song lyrics and traditional tales. These lessons allow time to practise fluency, prosody and comprehension.

Children read during these sessions in a variety of different ways:

• listening to the teacher model fluent reading and then have time to reread the same extract themselves;

• reading individually and feedback;

• working in groups;

• taking turns in pairs or reading aloud to their peers. 

You may see a number of these different strategies during one session.

Teachers plan questions to ensure coverage of the content domains through the week.  

Children are encouraged to orally speak the answer before writing anything down, acknowledging their first answer may not always be their best. At times. children are given sentence stems and vocabulary that is expected to be used within their answer.

Children are encouraged to provide evidence for their answer based on a text extract or a picture they have seen in the book. Where appropriate, children are encouraged to use evidence from a range of different places within the text.

Impact

We ensure a progression of skills in Phonics throughout Early Years and KS1 and expect that by the end of KS1 children can;

• Independently use their phonic knowledge to read fluently, sounding out and blending unfamiliar words without support,

• Read age appropriate books with increasing fluency and expression.

• Read accurately words containing two or more syllables.

• Read words containing common suffixes.

• Make predictions and inferences based on what they have read themselves and what has been read to them by others.

By the end of KS2 children can;

• Confidently read aloud with intonation and expression, drawing on subtle clues from the text.

• Express individual interests, thoughts and opinions on texts.

• Compare and contrast different texts on the same subject.

• Explain and comment on structural devices used in a variety of texts.

• Evaluate, comment and compare the different styles of writers – providing evidence and explanations.

• Perform familiar poems using tone, pitch and other devices to engage the audiences.

Teaching of Writing

Intent

We aim to prepare and equip children with the writing skills they need to become confident, independent writers and bring enjoyment into writing to inspire them. Through a balanced and broad curriculum, we intend to provide regular opportunities for children to write from different perspectives, e.g. to write as a historian. We want to ensure that all children, regardless of background and experiences, are provided with the scaffolding support and tools that they need to succeed.

Implementation

• Grammar and punctuation is taught both explicitly and implicitly within English lessons. We ensure that grammar skills are effectively embedded into the children’s everyday work.

• Carefully selected texts and novels are used to support and engage children in stories.

• Children are encouraged to use their knowledge of texts to write for a variety of purposes such as: explanations, instructions, reports, balanced arguments, stories and poems. They learn to plan, draft, revise, edit and present their work, before evaluating the success of their writing.

• From Nursery, our children are introduced to letter formation. As they progress through school, the children are encouraged to write in a neat, legible style using a cursive script.

• Drama and speaking and listening are an integral part of our curriculum in order to encourage self-confidence, imagination and empathy. It is used collaboratively alongside other subjects to engage pupils actively in a topic and develop a deeper understanding.

Impact

By the end of KS1 children can;

• Apply their phonics knowledge by using strategies taught in Phonics lessons.

• Write independently, using modeled examples as a tool to guide and sequence sentences.

• Write simple coherent narratives.

By the end of KS2 children can;

• Write effectively for a range of audiences and purposes, selecting appropriate language and form.

• Use a range of punctuation, tenses and dialogue in their writing effectively.

• Use grammar and vocabulary efficiently to suit the needs of the writing.

• Develop speed and fluency when writing in cursive script.