English
Mission Statement
It is our vision that all Plantation pupils will be life-long readers who can read texts both for pleasure and for understanding. Our children will be confident in their spoken and written communication and keen to develop their language skills beyond school and into their adult lives.
Intent
Plantation Primary School believes that developing strong English skills is essential for progressing across the curriculum and preparing for adult life. All teachers have a responsibility to develop pupils’ competence in reading, writing, speaking and listening and to ensure that pupils build the language skills necessary to fully access the curriculum.
Implementation
These intentions are embedded across our literacy lessons and the wider curriculum. We have a rigorous and well organised English curriculum and framework, that provides many purposeful opportunities for reading, writing and discussion. We use a wide variety of quality texts and resources to motivate and inspire our children. Teachers also ensure that cross curricular links with concurrent topic work are woven into the programme of study.
SUBJECT ORGANISATION
Early Years Foundation Stage:
The English Curriculum is delivered using the following documents:
- Early Years Foundation Stage Framework (2021)
- The Early learning Goals are followed to ensure continuity and progression from the Foundation Stage through to the National Curriculum.
- Read, Write Inc. Phonics
Key Stage 1:
The English Curriculum is delivered using the following documents:
- National Curriculum 2013
- Read, Write Inc. Phonics, Literacy Tree planning (Year 2 only)
Key Stage 2:
The English Curriculum is delivered using the following documents:
- National Curriculum 2013
- Literacy Tree planning
- Read, Write, Inc. Spelling Programme.
- Plantation Primary’s Programme of Study for Handwriting
APPROACHES TO SPEAKING AND LISTENING.
The National Curriculum (2013) reflects the importance of spoken language in pupils’ development across the whole curriculum. Spoken language underpins the development of reading and writing. At Plantation teachers ensure the continual development of pupils’ confidence and competence in spoken language and listening skills in a variety of forms:
- Learning to learn strategies – Group and paired activities
- Drama
- Reading aloud
- Performance poetry
APPROACHES TO READING
Read Write Inc. Phonics – Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 carry out paired and full-class reading as part of the daily Read, Write Inc. Phonics lesson. With the skilful support of the teacher, children with similar reading behaviours will practise their decoding and fluency skills whilst answering questions based on the content domains of the curriculum.
Reciprocal Reading – Key stage two carry out three Reciprocal Reading sessions a week. These sessions use the four key skills of: predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarising (The Fab 4) to explore a variety of high quality and age-appropriate texts. The children participate in reading discussion circles allowing the teacher to question and challenge the independent groups. New vocabulary is recorded in a clarifying booklet and independent comprehension skills are tested through the use of reading mats.
Reading Comprehension lessons – One lesson per week is dedicated to a reading activity.
Planning through high quality texts – Literacy Tree plans are based around high-quality texts, which are read as a class throughout the sequence of lessons. The books that we have selected to study as a school are rich and diverse in their themes, styles and genres. Equality and diversity is promoted throughout all of our reading and Literacy Tree plans have been carefully selected in light of this.
Home reading books – Reception and KS1 children take Book Bag Books from the Read, Write, Inc. Phonics Programme home either every three or five days depending on their reading ability. They will also be assigned a familiar eBook on Oxford Owl. Every reading book sent home will be matched to sound/sounds taught that week in school.
KS2 children use Accelerated Reader and after completing an initial reading comprehension test, they are allocated with a reading level range (ZPD). Children will take an appropriately levelled book home and then once completed, they will take a short comprehension quiz in school. Teachers are then able to track reading comprehension progress and identify reluctant or struggling readers.
Children of all ages are also encouraged to take ‘Reading for Pleasure’ books home. These are books that are not allocated a particular level. These books will be selected by the child, based on their own interests. These books can be taken from class libraries, the school library or our school’s ‘Reading to Learn’ topic boxes.
School Planners – School Planners are used from YR-Y6. Planners should be taken home and returned to school daily. The expectation is that children read at home at least four times a week and this activity should be signed off by a parent/guardian. Teachers will check and sign planners at least once per week and homework and spelling assignments will be written/stuck into planners for the week ahead.
Friday Afternoon Reading Activities
Thirty minutes every Friday is dedicated to enjoyable reading activities in a bid to promote reading for pleasure across the whole school. Example activities are: reading buddies, listening to the teacher read, time on reading apps, book reviews, time in the school library etc.
APPROACHES TO WRITING
Literacy Tree planning - Text-based teaching sequences, which are based around quality children’s literature by significant authors. Literacy Tree planning covers all objectives of the KS1 and KS2 National Curriculum 2014. This planning is altered and tailored to meet the needs of our children. Each text-based teaching sequence has been carefully selected by the English lead and class teachers to ensure that all books studied are both engaging and diverse.
All sequences are planned using the sequence of lessons planning template.
Cover Sheets – Each text-based teaching sequence will begin with a cover page that will be stuck into all English books. This cover page will provide children with a bank of vocabulary to use throughout the unit. It will also provide details of the writing opportunities taught during the sequence, including the audience, purpose and genre of each writing task.
Sentence Stacking – After a planning session based on the planning template, teachers will skilfully model quality examples of writing through the use of sentence stacking. Every KS1 and KS2 classroom will have a display dedicated to sentence stacking with an example of a shared piece of writing completed by the class. This shared piece of writing will celebrate ideas from individual members of the class and will promote the use of rich and varied vocabulary through a variety of writing genres.
Handwriting – Joined handwriting is introduced in Key Stage 1 (for those children who are ready to come off the RWI Phonics Programme). In subjects other than mathematics, school pencils should be used up to the child being Year 4 age. At this age a child has the opportunity to use a school pen once the teacher is satisfied that presentation is of a high enough standard. (Please see school handwriting policy).
CROSS-CURRICULAR ENGLISH OPPORTUNITIES
Collins Connected History and Connected Geography planning for creative curriculum provides many opportunities to apply writing skills across the curriculum. These writing opportunities will allow children to apply the skills, knowledge and understanding acquired through English lessons to other areas of the curriculum. Book studies dedicated to historical and geographical non-fiction texts will also be completed at various points throughout the year and a sequence of well-thought out lessons will be taught in the style of the Literacy Tree planning.
Each year group will also receive a ‘Reading to Learn’ box for each topic studied in History or Geography. These high-quality non-fiction texts will promote both reading for pleasure and reading for a purpose (reading to learn more about a topic).
Class teachers will also be able to group texts under a particular theme or topic using the EPIC reading app. Children will then be able to access these eBooks either in school or at home, once again promoting an ethos of ‘reading to learn’.
INCLUSION
We aim to provide for all children, so that they achieve as highly as they can in English according to their individual abilities. We will identify which pupils or groups of pupils are under-achieving and take steps to improve their attainment. Gifted children will be identified and suitable learning challenges provided. All children with traits of SPLD will be given buff or blue paper to write on as this removes the barrier to learning.
Intervention - In Key Stages 1 & 2 daily intervention groups will provide additional support to those children who are not meeting age expected standard. Children will be identified throughout pupil progress meetings and in conjunction with the SENCO. These will be carried out outside the English lesson. During the English lesson, focus groups will be selected by the class teacher. These will be children who are underperforming and reading & writing sessions will be provided to cater for their needs.
Equal opportunities- All children are provided with equal access to the English curriculum. We aim to provide suitable learning opportunities regardless of gender, ethnicity or home background.
PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT
We recognise the value of adults (both in school and at home) reading aloud to children, in order to improve their grasp of story language, enthuse them with a love of books and inspire them as writers. Parents are encouraged to read with their child daily (four times a week as a minimum). Information is given on how to support their child at reading workshops and on the school website.
From YR-Y6 children are given a School Planner that is taken home each night. Parents can make comments in the record so that there is ongoing dialogue between home and school.
During teacher-parent meetings, English targets for reading and writing are discussed and monitored, both at home and in school. Parents are always kept well informed of how children are progressing.
Impact
The impact on our children is clear: progress, sustained learning and transferrable skills. With the implementation of the writing journey being well established and taught thoroughly in both key stages, children are becoming more confident writers and by the time they are in upper Key Stage 2, most genres of writing are familiar to them. This means the teaching can focus on creativity, writer’s craft, sustained writing and manipulation of grammar and punctuation skills.
Each year we have most children achieving at least the expected standard and some at a greater depth in reading and writing at the end of KS1 and KS2, we strive to enhance this further for a greater number of children through even greater proportions of children achieving the expected standard and above.
As all aspects of English are an integral part of the curriculum, we aim to ensure that skills taught in the English lesson are transferred into other subjects; this provides for a consolidation of skills and a deeper understanding of how and when to use specific spelling, punctuation and grammar objectives.
Our aspiration is that as our children move on from Plantation Primary to the next step of their school career, that their creativity, passion for English and high aspirations travel with them and continue to grow and develop as they do.
Reading
Please see attached files below to see what reading at Plantation looks like in EYFS, Key Stage One and Key Stage Two.
- Read Write Inc. Phonics more information - click here
- Accelerated Reader more information - click here
Writing
Please see attached files below to see what reading at Plantation looks like in EYFS, Key Stage One and Key Stage Two.
- Read Write Inc. Phonics more information - click here
- Read Write Inc. Spelling more information - click here
Websites/Useful Links
https://ukhosted61.renlearn.co.uk/1896667/public/rpm/login/Login.aspx?srcID=s
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/primary
Policies
Please click here to view our English Policy.
Please click here to view our Reading for Pleasure Policy.
Please click here to view our Reading Policy.
Please click here to view our Handwriting Policy.
Please click here to view our Handwriting Programme of Study Policy.
(By clicking the above links you will be redirected to a website called TheSchoolBus)