English: Reading and Writing

At St Anthony’s, our English vision is to foster a love of language and literature through the use of quality texts and books to engage, inspire and excite our children.

Reading Curriculum Statement

Intent

At Saint Anthony’s we believe reading is a key life skill. Therefore, we aim to foster a love of language and reading and, therefore, we attach great importance to enabling our children to become fluent readers whilst promoting reading for enjoyment.

We are determined to develop independence and fluency in all readers to ensure a life-long love of reading and ensuring that all children can achieve their full potential across all areas of the curriculum.

By the time they leave St Anthony's, we want all our children(SEN, EAL, more able, disadvantaged) to have the ability to read with expression, clarity and confidence; to have a thirst for reading a range of genre; and to discuss books and authors with confidence.

Implementation

• Children in Nursery use Phonics to help children to develop an awareness of sound through engaging activities that nurture focused listening and attention such as rhyming, story telling, recognising their own name and explicit teaching of early phonics.
• In Reception, children begin learning the alphabetic code and how to blend words containing it. They receive daily phonics sessions and follow the order of revisit and review, teach and practise, practise and apply. Within these sessions, teachers and teaching assistants focus on decoding, prosody and comprehension to develop the child as a reader. Children who need further support with phonics, receive daily intervention in small groups or 1:1. They are assessed regularly to identify further support that may be needed.
• In Year 1, children continue to learn Phonics through Floppy’s Phonics and complete Level 5 by the end of the year. They also follow the pattern of revisit and review, teach, practise and apply. All children have access to a fully phonetically decodable book which is carefully matched to their Phonics Phase. In addition, they will also take home a book of their choice.
• In year 2 children continue to learn develop their phonics skills while also learning and applying spelling patterns. Those that require extra support receive this through quality first teaching and intervention.
• In KS2, the No Nonsense Spelling scheme is used to plan and teach spelling patterns. Weekly spellings are sent home to apply and embed the skills and spelling patterns they have learnt in class.
• Across school,  children have daily reading lessons using a range of text types and genres. The focus of these lessons are to develop the fluency of reading through adult modelling, shared, choral and paired reading.
• For each class, the teacher reads a class novel which has been carefully chosen for pleasure.
• Reading for pleasure is promoted through a range of different strategies: KS2 children visit the school library each week to choose a book, buddy reading, class novels, World Book Day celebrations, author visits etc. 
• Each class has a reading area, showcasing a range of age appropriate books,  designed to engage the children and promote a love of reading. 

Impact

 We ensure a progression of skills in Phonics throughout Early Years and into KS2.

By the end of EYFS children can:

Comprehension

• demonstrate understanding of what has been read to them by retelling stories and narratives using their own words and recently introduced vocabulary.
• anticipate - where appropriate - key events in known stories.
• use and understand recently introduced vocabulary during discussions about stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems and during role-play.

Word reading

• say a sound for each letter in the alphabet and recognise some digraphs.
• read words consistent with their phonic knowledge by sound-blending.
• read aloud simple sentences and books that are consistent with their phonic knowledge, including some common exception words (irregular words).

 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 and authors.
• Compare and contrast different texts on the same subject or by the same author.
• 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 for their opinions.
• Perform familiar poems using tone, pitch and other devices to engage the audiences.

Writing Curriculum Statement

Intent

At St. Anthony’s we have created a curriculum that encourages children to become enthusiastic and engaged with English, providing our children with rich and varied learning opportunities that help them to become confident and enthusiastic learners. We want our children to have a positive attitude towards communication and to be able to independently express their emotions and their ideas. Through our English Curriculum, we strive to teach the children how important their reading, writing, speaking and listening skills will be in the real world. By giving this context to their learning, the children understand the value of English to them now, and in their futures.  We aim to develop children who write with confidence and accuracy for a variety of purposes and audiences whilst establishing their own individual flair. We want our children to be able to write with grammatical accuracy and be able to apply spelling patterns correctly using a neat handwriting style. Furthermore, we want all of our pupils to be capable of transferring their English skills to other curriculum subjects as well as preparing them for their next steps in education.

Implementation

• Our English lessons develop pupils’ spoken language, reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary.  Writing is often taught in a cross-curricular way, linking with other areas of the curriculum such as Science, History, Geography and current events taking place in the world. In each unit, opportunities are planned to allow children to develop their oracy skills as we understand the impact this holds on developing quality vocabulary, used correctly, and coherent writing.  Developing oracy skills teaches our pupils to speak clearly, to convey their ideas fluently and confidently to ask questions.
• Each year group has a yearly overview of the writing genres, both narrative and non-narrative, that are covered.  These have been planned to ensure correct coverage of the key genres as well as build on skills from year to year. Units will vary in length, and the outcome of each unit will be an ARE piece. Extended Writing units will be used to assess the pupil’s skills against the agreed National Curriculum expectations. Grammar and punctuation knowledge and skills are taught through English lessons within context, as much as possible. They are planned for on a long term grammar plan to ensure coverage.
• Children in EYFS and Key Stage One have daily phonics lessons, with teaching and interventions continuing into Key Stage Two as required.  Children in Key Stage 2 have weekly spelling lessons and an opportunity to practice using spelling rules. Our handwriting scheme supports and provides an opportunity for reinforcing phonics and spelling teachings.  Handwriting is taught weekly across school.
• To develop enthusiasm and a love of writing, we provide a wide range of stimuli through the use of film and imagery, music and ICT as well as real life enrichment experiences.
• To support children in moving towards independent writing, writing lessons incorporate a range of activities including modelled, shared and guided writing; peer assessment and oracy and discussion.
• We promote the importance of written work by providing varied and exciting opportunities for writing for purpose and opportunities for children’s writing to be read aloud and seen or heard by an audience, allowing children to see themselves as authors and poets. 

Impact

• Children talk enthusiastically about writing. 
• Pupils will enjoy and be confident in writing across a range of genres (including fiction, non-fiction and poetry), using the appropriate style, structure and features.
• Pupils of all abilities will be able to succeed in all English lessons because work will be appropriately scaffolded.
• They will plan, draft, revise and edit their own work, and learn how to self and peer assess.
• Pupils will have a wide vocabulary that they use within their writing.
• Pupils will have a good knowledge of how to adapt their writing based on the context and audience.
• Pupils will leave primary school being able to effectively apply spelling rules and patterns they have been taught.
• The % of pupils working at ARE within each year group will be at least in line with national averages.
• The % of pupils working at Greater Depth within each year group will be at least in line with national averages.