English at Whixall CE Primary School

Intent
At Whixall CE Primary School, we intend for all our children to experience an inspiring, language-rich and motivational English environment. We aim to foster a love of books and reading, alongside a positive culture of writing, for a variety of purposes and audiences and across all subjects within our broad curriculum.

Our youngest children will begin their early reading and writing development supported by excellent synthetic phonics teaching, giving them the skills needed to confidently segment, decode and build words. During their time at Whixall CE Primary School, all children will be given the opportunity to immerse themselves in a wide variety of texts. Through shared texts and explicit teaching, they will experience a wide range of vocabulary, giving them the understanding and power of language that they need to flourish.

Our intention is that every child will leave our school as an able and independent communicator, with the confidence and skills required to read and write fluently. They will be well prepared in all aspects of English and fully equipped to become life-long learners.

Our intentions in writing are for children to:

• write for a purpose;
• see themselves as real writers;
• take ownership of their writing;
• see writing as an interesting and enjoyable process;
• acquire the ability to organise, plan and edit their written work.

Our intentions in reading are for children to:

• have the skills to decode words in order to be able to read fluently with understanding of what they have read;
• become enthusiastic and motivated readers;
• have a love of literature and an enjoyment of reading for pleasure;
• develop confidence in reading a variety of genres and acquire a wide vocabulary.

Our intentions in Speaking and Listening are for children to:

• be encouraged to speak with confidence, clarity and fluency.
• recognise the value of listening;
• be encouraged to have the self-esteem to be confident in the value of their own opinions and to be able to express them to others;
• be able to adapt the use of language for a range of different purposes and audiences, including using Standard English;
• learn to converse, sustain a logical argument and respond to others appropriately.

Implementation

Reading
At Whixall CE Primary School we aim to foster a love of books and reading from the very first day your child attends our school. We do this through books always being available for the children to read - every classroom has a reading area with a selection of books and we also have a dedicated library area; we share books at every opportunity. We read, retell, rewrite, adapt and share books during more formal lesson time linked to literacy skills and thematic work.

Teaching Phonics
At Whixall CE Primary School, we believe that phonics is fundamental in helping children build the necessary foundations to develop into fluent, confident and passionate readers and writers.  We use Floppy’s Phonics as our phonic scheme, which provides a progressive and structured programme for the children master phonics effectively.

To support phonics at home, we run family phonic information sessions.

During the first few weeks of school your child will begin to bring home reading books. These will begin with simple picture books which contain no words. These encourage your child to tell their own story by observing what is taking place in the illustrations. This helps the children to develop story style language. We will also read to the children on a regular basis.

The children then progress onto books containing simple short words that they are able to sound out using the phonic skills they have learnt in class. This then leads onto more complex books containing longer sentences which eventually lead onto story books.

The children are heard regularly in school by a variety of adults and books are changed on a regular basis, it is however beneficial for a child to reread stories.

In school, we use a phonics approach to reading. Our chosen systemic approach to phonics resource, is Floppy’s Phonics. The children will learn phonics (letter sounds) in class and use this to sound out and blend words.

Our reading scheme is levelled into stages and the children progress through these levels at their own pace. Once they have completed stage 10 the children become “free readers” and are able to select their own reading material.

In Key Stage 1 the children are taught reading through a Guided reading approach. The children develop their reading skills through high quality discussion and begin to understand what has been read and create links both within the text and beyond. This approach helps the children develop and embed core reading skills and become more confident readers. The children do not just read the given texts, they unpick them with the support of the adult leading the session.  They also learn the skills to reason and infer which therefore allows them to build a greater understanding of the given text. Picture book studies also form part of our reading approach throughout the school.  This whole school approach to reading gives all children the opportunity to become more confident, fluent and expressive readers.

Reading at home
Reading with your child is the most useful, productive, powerful and enjoyable activity to do at home that will not only help them achieve at school, but also strengthen your relationship. We expect families to read at home as often as possible – daily would be the most beneficial. Reading at home, should be recorded in your child’s Reading Diary.  This could be listening to your child read, an adult reading to a child or sharing a story together.  We want to make sure EVERY child (and grown-up) at Whixall CE Primary School LOVES reading as much as their teachers do!

Reading with your child is a lot more than just hearing them read their school books – here are some ideas to help you and your child develop a love of reading:

• Help them with their phonics sounds as they read
• Read to them; model how a story should be read with exciting pitch, tone, pause, punctuation and character voice
• Read a range of different types of text – NOT JUST THEIR SCHOOL BOOK!
• Discuss what they are reading: ask questions about what might happen next and about what has already happened
• Share your favourite books
• Visit the Library
• Make time for stories EVERY night: a routine is always good and story time can be a very special time for children and the parents/carers to share together.

Writing
Children throughout school are given a range of purposeful opportunities to promote and support writing. When planning, staff develop writing opportunities rooted in high-quality literature or first-hand experiences.

Children develop the ability to produce well-structured, detailed writing in which the meaning is made clear and which engages the interest of the reader. Throughout school, attention is given to the formal structures of English, grammatical detail, punctuation, and spelling.

Teachers model different writing strategies during shared writing. Guided writing sessions are used to target the specific needs of both groups and individuals, whilst children also have opportunities to write at length in extended writing sessions.

Opportunities are also made for cross-curricular links, which make writing more meaningful for children. Teachers plan for the children to practise and apply the skills, knowledge, and understanding acquired through English lessons to other areas of the curriculum.

To develop our children as writers we:

• treat children as writers, from the earliest stage, who have ideas that they want to communicate, building on writing skills they have acquired and their knowledge of print from their environment;
• provide experiences where children can acquire confidence and a positive attitude to writing;
• develop and sustain writing skills by providing opportunities for children to write for a range of purposes and audiences;
• use guided writing sessions to model writing skills, teaching children how to compose, amend and revise their writing;
• teach children to become critical readers of their writing by using self-evaluation and checking their work independently for sense, accuracy, and meaning;
• teach grammar and punctuation in the context of children’s own writing, as well as through discrete lessons;
• teach children to develop their ability to organise and present imaginative and/or factual writing and poetry in different ways;
• teach strategies for spelling to enable children to become confident and competent spellers;
• develop a legible, neat, cursive handwriting style with increasing regard to presentation.

Spelling
In EYFS and KS1, daily phonics is the key to children’s learning of spelling. This is taught using Floppy’s Phonics. Children are taught to blend sounds to read and segment to spell. At the same time, they learn words that are not phonically regular (common exception words).

From Year 2 and into KS2 the children move towards using their phonic knowledge to help them to understand spelling rules and patterns. We teach children to use their growing understanding of the morphology and etymology of words to support their spelling. Helping the children to understand how to use and apply known spelling patterns (and to develop strategies to tackle common exception words) is the key to helping them to become successful spellers.

Speaking and Listening
Speaking and listening feature extensively in both our English lessons and other curriculum areas. We promote the development and extension of children’s spoken vocabulary which, as well as giving them the tools to articulate themselves effectively, builds their understanding of written text and their written language skills. Children are given opportunities to take part in role-play, participate in debates, and learn and perform texts. This helps them to build self-confidence and effective communication skills.

Impact
The impact of our English curriculum is a community of enthusiastic readers and writers, who enjoy showcasing their developing literacy knowledge and skills. Children achieve highly in the phonics screening check, and at the end of the EYFS.  Data for the end of Key Stage 2 assessments shows that our children are consistently meeting, or exceeding, the national percentage of children achieving the expected standards in Reading and Writing. Outcomes of work in both English and topic books evidence the high expectations of written work - selecting cross-curricular texts supports this writing as well as competencies across the curriculum. Children write successfully across a range of forms and adapt their writing considering the purpose and audience.

Writing Long-Term Plan