English
Throughout their time at Sidbury CE Primary School we strive to equip our children with skills which will enable them to communicate effectively. Being confident and competent readers, writers and speakers is empowering and integral to all aspects of life. Through our teaching of English, in line with the expectations set out in the National Curriculum, we aim to develop children’s understanding of and fluency with the technical aspects of the subject, explore the richness of our English language heritage and inspire a curiosity about language and words which in hand develops a love of reading. In order to do this we use Little Wandle Phonics Programme in Early Years and Key Stage 1. In Key Stage 2, we use Complete Comprehension and Accelerated Reader so children can cover the threshold concepts of reading words accurately and understand texts.
Reading
We believe that learning to read is the key to unlocking knowledge for children, and because of this we work hard to ensure children have a range of opportunities for reading. Learning to read is a journey and many skills need to be developed along the way. We start this journey as soon as the children start in our school.
Reading is integrated into every area of the curriculum; supporting children's development of vocabulary, stamina, fluency, prosody and comprehension.
Early Years Foundation Stage, Year 1 & Year 2
When children start school, we first teach the children to recognise letters, the sounds that they make and using a synthetic, systematic phonic approach which follows the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds phonics programme. Children are taught how the sounds (phonemes) are blended together to read or segmented (broken down) when the children are learning to write. If you would like to know any further information about our phonics programme you can find it here.
https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/
We use Big Cat Collins books to teach reading, these books are matched to the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds phonics programme. Our children take part in guided reading sessions, where they apply their phonics learning alongside a variety of other reading skills including fluency, prosody and comprehension. Regular assessments focussing on phonic knowledge and fluency will ensure that children's books are allocated accurately ensuing that the books children are reading align with their reading ability. The book children have been reading within their reading group will be sent home every Friday, children should be able to practice reading these books with little or no help at all. Children will also bring home a shared reading book, this may not be matched to their reading ability, but may be a topic they are interested in, and one that you can share and read together at home.
Year 3, 4, 5 & 6
In Key Stage 2 children are taught reading through a whole class reading approach with a clear scaffold for every child dependant on their individual ability. Children still requiring phonics provision will receive specific interventions using the Little Wandle catch up programme; this will ensure continuity with their journey from Key Stage One. Reading lessons follow complete comprehension, which allow us to target specific reading skills based on the threshold concepts.
Accelerated reader is used to ensure all our children develop a love for reading. The children are quizzed on their book afterwards so we can track and monitor progress.
Reading at home
EYFS and KS1:
Children will take home reading books based on their reading ability and choose a book from the classroom, that maybe above their reading ability to take home to read for pleasure.
Reading a text 3 times, enables children to become familiar with it. Each read moves through the stages of blending until fluency when children can then add in expression and they can understand what they have read.
- First Read - the child is mainly going to decode a lot aloud, at this read they will not necessarily be able to understand the story as their brain power is going on identifying the sounds and blending them together to read words.
- Second Read - the child is encouraged that if they need to decode (blend sounds together to make a word ) then to do it in their head so that they don't keep decoding aloud. This helps their reading fluency.
- Third Read - the child can now read with more fluency as their brain power is not going on just decoding the words, as they have had practice with that.
There are two types of reading book that your child will bring home:
· A reading practice book - This will be at the correct phonic stage for your child. They should be able to read this fluently and independently.
· A sharing book - Your child may not be able to read this book on their own as it is not fully decodable and may not match their exact phonics level. This book is for you both to read and enjoy together.
Children in KS2 are expected to read daily and can record their reads in their reading record.
Little Wandle Keep Up, Toe-By-Toe and TRUGs are some of the reading interventions we use regularly.
Writing
English is taught through high quality texts that teach offering rich opportunities to explore and develop oral and written language and are chosen from a broad range of genres. We use the Literacy Tree resources, which encourage children to embrace embedding a text before building up to planning and writing their own. As a school we have clearly mapped our texts that we use in each class to ensure coverage and consistency.
Spelling
Spelling is a fundamental skill for children to master in order to allow them to show that they are working at age related expectations. In school, from Year 2 onwards. we use pathway to spelling to support the systematic teaching of spelling. Children focus on spelling rules eg. looking at homophones (words that sound the same but are spelt differently and have different definitions) and root words with suffixes. Children's home learning will reflect the recent spelling patterns they have learnt in school.
Handwriting
Previously, children in our EYFS have learnt how to form their letters, using our pre cursive handwriting style; following up to date relevant research and guidance, this has now been amended to begin in Year 2, where cursive writing is introduced.
The following information will help you to understand how our how our writing curriculum links to the above mentioned threshold concepts.