English
At the bottom of this page, you will be able to access the policy for English. You will also find where the National Curriculum objectives are taught.
.PNG)
Reading
Our school reading schemes are:
- Collins Big Cat Phonics for Little Wandle for Nursery to Year 1 children
- Collins Big Cats and Oxford Reading Tree for children from Year 2 upwards.
These schemes offer a wide range of texts suitable for all ages and abilities. This ensures pupils have every opportunity to access a range of genres, and to ultimately develop a confidence and love of reading for life.
Word Reading & Comprehension
At Castle, we focus on the mechanics of reading initially:
Phonics & Decoding: taught through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds programme, beginning in EYFS and throughout Year 1. For those children who are falling behind their peers in Year 2 and beyond, we use Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Rapid Catch-Up programme.
P Prosody: an integral part of the reading process. Children develop reading with appropriate meaning, stress and intonation. It provides an opportunity to explore characters’ feelings, what words mean and how punctuation adds to the meaning.
Fluency: developed and refined before moving onto comprehension-based reading.
Comprehension skills are taught and practised within the Little Wandle Reading programme, however the following skills provide the main focus of the reading curriculum within key stage 2. We use the acronym VIPERS as an aid to teacher planning and pupil recall of the reading domains as part of the national curriculum. They are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts.
Our reading curriculum consists of - whole class reading, shared reading, modelled reading, guided or group reading and independent reading.
Vocabulary (V): enabling children to identify and explain the meaning of words in context. Supporting them in expanding their vocabulary and creativity skills in readiness for writing.
Inference (I) and Prediction (P): enabling children to read for clues / find evidence within a text and apply their own knowledge of the world and other books they have read.
Explain (E): enabling children to understand why and how authors make particular choices with language and structure of texts. They then explore the effect these choices have on them as a reader.
Retrieve (R): enabling children to locate key details from fiction and non-fiction texts. Encouraging the use of skimming and scanning a text at speed.
Sequence / Summarise (S): enabling children to fully understand a text by ordering events or main points. Putting longer sections of text into their own words in order to shorten or simplify them.
Writing
Writing: Transcription, Composition & Vocabulary, Grammar & Punctuation
At Castle we focus on the following skills to encourage our children to express themselves creatively:
Spelling & Phonics: taught alongside reading. EYFS and Year 1 follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds programme. Year 2 – 6 use the Spelling Shed scheme of work alongside the Rapid Catch-Up programme within Little Wandle where required.
Handwriting: taught discreetly and within spelling sessions. Guidance of the letter formation within Little Wandle Letters and Sounds is followed within EYFS and Year 1. Cursive writing is taught from the Spring term in Year 2 and throughout KS2 following the Spectrum programme from Level 3 onwards. Once a fluent, legible style of handwriting is consistently used children in KS2 can gain a ‘pen licence’.
Planning, Writing & Editing: enabling children to understand the whole writing process. Children are made aware of their own mistakes and taught to proofread; the concept of correcting and improving their own work is modelled as a positive stage of writing.
Awareness of Audience, Purpose & Structure: taught through the use of language and text structure, children’s experience of writing is put into a context. Real-life experiences are used where appropriate.
Sentence Structure & Tense: taught within SPaG sessions. Developing the use of Standard English within pupils’ writing and learning how that differs from spoken language.
Use of Phrases & Clauses: taught within SPaG sessions. Extending sentences, experimenting with syntax and widening vocabulary choices, enabling children to become creative writers.
Punctuation: taught within SPaG sessions, enabling children to understand and follow rules of demarcating sentences correctly
Terminology: highlighted and shared with pupils from the start of the sequence of lessons, encouraging pupils to use the correct terminology when discussing concepts. Displayed in all classrooms (and books, where appropriate)
Writing genres are taught through the use of text-based units of work based around Topic or Science subject areas where appropriate. Film-based units are used to vary the text type and to 'hook' children in with a new genre or topic. We use Literacy Shed Plus as a basis for these units of work.
For further information please contact the school on 01782 433218 or email [email protected] with your request.
