ENGLISH

IMPLEMENTATION:

Phonics

Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) forms the basis for all Phonics teaching throughout our school. It sets out a detailed and systematic programme for teaching phonic skills for children starting by the age of five, with the aim of them becoming fluent readers by age seven. Children who are not making expected progress also receive phonics/reading additional intervention sessions. We use ELS to monitor children’s progress and complete assessments on a half termly basis.

At the end of Reception, our aim is for all children to be working within Phase 3 Phonics. At the end of Year One, our aim is for all children to be working within Phase 5 Phonics. At the end of Year Two, our aim is for all children to complete the Phonics phases by Easter and increase their confidence using and applying them confidently when Reading and Writing. When children progress into KS2, we identify and track children who still require phonics input. These children receive additional phonics teaching and continue to read books that match and reinforce the sounds they know.

Speaking and Listening

Throughout the school, opportunities to develop pupils spoken language in a range of contexts underpin the development of reading and writing. Pupils are encouraged to speak clearly, confidently and with expression in order to communicate their ideas and feelings. They are taught to understand and use the conventions for discussion and debate.

Pupils develop their ability to explain their understanding of books and other reading and to prepare their ideas before they write. They are encouraged to discuss their ideas in order to make sense of their learning.

Pupils are given many opportunities through drama, role play, performances, reading out loud, presentations and debate in many areas of the curriculum.

Reading

Reading is an integral part of the curriculum at St. Joseph’s and it is our vision to ensure that all children receive the opportunity to read and engage in high quality and relevant literature. At St. Joseph’s children learn to develop their word reading and comprehension skills in order to become fluent and reflective readers, enabling them to foster a long-term love of reading.

We aim for children to be able to read widely, confidently and to a high standard in a range of subjects. We want children to develop a love of reading and acquire a wide vocabulary of written and spoken language. The school has a good range of high-quality texts to support the teaching of English.

In Early Years, children start their reading journey by telling stories using picture books. This helps children to understand the structure of stories. The Oxford Reading Tree scheme is used throughout our school. This allows children to engage in reading using their phonic and word knowledge. This continues progressively through KS1 where the scheme grows to include a wider range of sounds and vocabulary as well as new themes. The scheme continues into Upper Key Stage 2 where the children are exposed to longer and more challenging texts which enable them to exercise fluency, understanding and comprehension skills at a deeper level.

Across both KS1 and KS2, we operate a RED, AMBER, GREEN (5,3,1) system. Children classed as GREEN (children working at least comfortably at age related expectations) will read at least once a week with an adult, AMBER readers (those reading at age related expectations) will read at least 3x a week and RED readers (those working below age related expectations) will read daily. Starting points are taken from reading and comprehension age baselines which are done at the beginning of every year.

Reading VIPERS

VIPERS is an acronym to aid the recall of the 6 reading domains as part of the UK’s reading curriculum.  They are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts.

VIPERS stands for:

• Vocabulary

• Inference

• Prediction

• Explanation

• Retrieval

• Sequence or Summarise

Reading skills are taught and practised using the VIPERS during whole class reading sessions. The 6 domains focus on the comprehension aspect of reading and not the mechanics: decoding, fluency, prosody etc.  As such, VIPERS is not a reading scheme but rather a method of ensuring that teachers ask, and students are familiar with, a range of questions.

Children at Upper KS2 access Reading Plus, an online programme for children in Year 5 and

6. Reading Plus builds the physical skills for fluency and stamina, provides texts to build vocabulary and comprehension and has been shown to be effective in narrowing the achievement gap between boys and girls. We have a school subscription to Lexia (a computer-based approach to improving reading) Lexia provides a balanced approach to reading covering six areas: phonological awareness, phonics, structural awareness, automaticity, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

Each classroom (and our school library) offers a wide variety of books; children are encouraged to choose a variety of genres and show their understanding through reading journal activities.

Teachers use a variety of methods when reading with children in class including individual reading, guided group work and whole class reading. This approach allows teachers to assess, plan and deliver a high-quality reading curriculum throughout the school linked specifically to meet the children’s needs and experiences.

Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation

Spelling, grammar and punctuation are taught both discretely and as part of English lessons. We use progressive spelling lists across the school which are matched to the expectations for each Key Stage in the National Curriculum. These are adapted to meet the needs of individual pupils when appropriate.

Spelling, grammar and punctuation are assessed termly.

Writing

At St. Joseph’s our vision is that every child will become a creative and imaginative writer and will have the skills to be able to write effectively across a range of genres.

We aim to use all areas of the curriculum to develop writing skills and generate purposeful writing experiences for our children. This gives our children the opportunity to engage in writing that they find interesting and inspiring.

We use a cross curricular approach to our writing opportunities which enables children to make links with other areas of the curriculum and apply their skills across a range of subjects for different purposes and audiences. This ensures that writing opportunities are relevant and real to our children and they can see a clear purpose to their work.

We are currently in the process of adapting the way Writing is taught and we aim to have a consistent approach across the school. Following a build-up of skills taught throughout our daily English lessons, children will complete a piece of extended writing, usually on a two-weekly cycle. We cover a variety of different genres across school – narrative, recount, explanation, discussion, instructions, biography, character and setting descriptions, poetry etc. We analyse ‘good examples’ of a similar piece of writing to discuss/model with children, before working together on planning frames to support children with the structure of their writing. We use ‘Success Criteria’ so children know exactly what they have to achieve in each piece. We plan smaller working groups for children who need extra support and to extend children working at ‘greater depth.’

Writing in KS1

Each piece of extended writing is built up from shorter pieces, for example, a character profile, vocabulary activity, an adjective lesson or a story plan. The extended piece is preceded by a session where children are reminded of the skills and objectives covered in the two-week period and these skills form the basis of success criteria - informing children of what they need to include in the piece. Success criteria may include the following: weekly grammar focus, genre reference, current phonic expectations and handwriting expectations. We include regular pit stops/mini plenaries to share good examples and focus in on a particular aspect. By the end of KS1 children are able, with support, to revisit their writing alongside the success criteria and then make additions or corrections to their work. Children are supported to recognise their next steps to improve their Writing. Future planning and teaching will reflect these. We aim to gradually increase independence of children in their approach to Writing. All children should be writing with some degree of independence with appropriate input, support, modelling and guidance from teachers. This sometimes means that a small group of children will work supported by an intervention teacher.

Writing in KS2

In KS2, the children have opportunities to draft and edit before completing a final piece of Writing. This is usually over a two-week period. We share and collect examples of appropriate vocabulary which children are encouraged to use when writing independently. As in KS1, we include regular pit stops/mini plenaries to share good examples and focus in on a particular aspect (such as punctuation). Children begin to acquire the skills to self or peer assess work against the success criteria. We aim to increase independence of children to improve their confidence. All children should be writing independently in KS2, but with appropriate input, support, modelling and guidance from teachers.

Writing in Early Years

In order to write effectively in later years, children need to develop physical as well as literary skills. In Nursery, we focus on developing these physical skills by encouraging ‘big arm’ movements to strengthen muscles, alongside fine motor skills to develop coordination and control. ‘Dough Disco’ are among the programmes used to support this. By the Summer term many children are attempting to write their own name. These are further refined as the children move into Reception, where writing is linked to the phonics programme. Children learn the correct formation of each letter as it is introduced and this is reinforced throughout the year along with a correct pencil grip and writing posture. As their phonic skills develop, children are encouraged to use this knowledge in their writing. In order to achieve the Early Learning Goals for Writing at the end of Reception – we work towards children being able to write a series of simple sentences, spelling some high frequency words correctly and using phonetically plausible spellings for unfamiliar words.

Non-negotiables

The non- negotiables are a list of writing objectives that children must be able to do in the school year to make sure that they can do as well as they can in the year after.

The expectation is that these are skills which have been taught, practised and applied in a wide range of contexts before they become a ‘non- negotiable’. They are the minimum requirement and are not intended to replace the key objectives in each year group.

They are designed to be used within the classroom on a regular basis across the curriculum e.g. displayed on working walls or as table top mats for children to refer to frequently in order to self-edit or peer-edit their writing.

Writing is assessed at least termly. Teachers work together regularly to moderate writing across the school.