English
Intent
At New Close Primary School, the teaching of English is part of the foundation of our curriculum. Our aim is to ensure every child becomes primary literate and progresses in speaking, listening, reading and writing. We have high expectations for all our children and want each of them to achieve their full potential in English during their time at New Close Primary School so that they are ready for the next step in their education.
English is the cornerstone to all learning at New Close. We endeavour to help our children develop into articulate and imaginative communicators to support and enhance their thinking and understanding of the world around them through a broad, rich and engaging English curriculum.
We ensure books, vocabulary and reading have a central role in our curriculum, not only to enhance learning, but to support the development of children’s emotional literacy.
Implementation
To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in English, we have implemented a curriculum that is progressive through the school.
Reading
Learning to Read
We follow a systematic approach to teaching phonics, using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme. The teaching of phonics begins in Reception, and teaching continues daily to at least the point where children can read almost all words fluently. This provides children with the skills they need to begin to read words, captions and whole sentences as soon as possible.
Focused Reading Practice
Working in small groups, EYFS, Year 1 and Year 2 children experience three reading practice sessions per week. These focus on the key reading skills of decoding, prosody and comprehension. When the three reading sessions have been taught in school the books will be sent home. The children are expected to read at home at least five times a week and parents are expected to record a comment in the child’s home-link book when they hear their child read.
Support at Home
All children who are accessing decodable books through Little Wandle book scheme, also take home a 'Read Together' book. The purpose of this book is to widen the range of book/text type the children are exposed to and encourage book sharing at home; developing a love of reading. These are also the books that might be used as part of our dedicated storytime in EYFS and Year 1.
Support to Keep Up and Catch Up
Until pupils are fluent readers, ‘keep up’ sessions are used for pupils who have been identified in on-going assessment as needing more support in consolidating their phonics knowledge. KS2 pupils who need more support in developing their reading skills receive intervention on an individual or small groups in addition to whole class reading.
Reading for Meaning
Developing Fluency ​
In EYFS and Yr1, pupils discuss texts and read for meaning as part of their reading practice. In year 2, once they have completed the Little Wandle programme, pupils follow the Little Wandle fluency programme. Towards the end of Year 2, we begin to use a whole class guided reading model to explore more challenging texts. ​
A Clear Framework for Reading Lessons
Reading lessons are 30mins four times a week. In whole class reading lessons, pupils read from a reading spine of high-quality fiction, non-fiction and poetry, to explicitly teach and consolidate the skills needed for pupils to be confident readers for meaning.
Each lesson starts with pre-teaching unfamiliar vocabulary, to develop pupils' lexicon to support independent reading. Teachers then explore the texts through different sorts of reading: fluency, extended, close exploration and ‘application’ lessons, which focus on applying reading strategies to different question formats. These are used to develop pupils’ fluency as a bridge to comprehension and ensure that they can engage with and explore a variety of texts a meaningful way.
Teachers use formative assessment through questioning, and through monitoring the quality of pupils’ responses. NFER and SATS papers are used to formally assess pupils' progress in reading.
Love of Reading
A Diet of Quality Texts
The choice of texts in the reading spine is intended to inspire pupils to continue reading class books, and other books by the same author. A range of books is available in class libraries for pupils. Depending on the age and reading ability of the child, these books may also be read in school with an adult. Staff monitor the children’s choice of book to ensure suitability and variety in genre and author.
Daily Story Time and Reading Together
In EYFS, pupils have story times throughout the day. In other year groups. story time happens in every year group at the end of the day to ensure the children are read to everyday and share, discuss and enjoy the endless possibilities of books. The choice of text is sometimes shared with pupils and sometimes includes text studied in reading lessons.
New Close Reading Races – running alongside reading at New Close, we run our reading race system. Children are encouraged to record each read at home and record it on their reading races. There are five reading races to complete, totalling 100 reads altogether. At the end of their fifth reading race, children come to the headteacher and select a book of their choice.
Writing
Handwriting: From EYFS pupils are taught how to hold a pencil and to use the Little Wandle letter formation to be able to print words. The Little Wandle Handwriting scheme is used in EYFS and is also used as an intervention for KS1 pupils who need more support with letter formation. KS1 and 2 classes use the LetterJoin scheme, with explicit teaching, modelling and feedback given to improve transcription skills.
Spelling: Once the Little Wandle programme has been completed, Year 2 pupils then transition onto the Little Wandle spelling programme, developing application of phonics and exploring spelling rules.
In KS2, the Spelling Shed programme is used as an effective and fully comprehensive approach that targets reading patterns of spelling, the etymology and morphology of words and develops pupils’ spelling knowledge progressively.
Pupils in KS1 and KS2 practice writing dictated sentences everyday to be able to practise retrieval of spellings they have learnt and handwriting.
Punctuation and Grammar
KS1 and 2 pupils are taught punctuation and grammar explicitly in discrete lessons, in line with progression documents. This knowledge is then consolidated and revised during application in writing lessons. In KS2, pupils are prompted to consider how grammatical features and punctuation are used for clarity and effect.
Learning to Write
In EYFS and KS1, we use engage pupils with stories, giving them the motivation to write,
EYFS
Pupils experience a range of engaging texts which are used as stimulus for oral composition, and link to continuous provision activities and diverse opportunities for mark-making which enhance pupils’ fine motor skills for writing. During the course of the year, pupils will practice segmenting words to spell, and will develop the ability to write letters, words, phrases, and sentences readable by others, preparing them for KS1.
KS1
Pupils engage with stimulus texts to inspire writing, while grammar and punctuation are taught separately and reinforced in practice. Discussions, teacher modelling, and scaffolds support sentence construction. In Year 1, pupils sequence sentences and apply phonics to spelling. By the end of year 2, they will have develop their ability to transcribe with increasing fluency as they start to write narrative, recounts, non-fiction and poetry. By the end of KS1, they have developed vocabulary, sentence structures, and punctuation, preparing them for KS2 writing.
KS2
Writing for Purpose and Audience
During KS2, pupils consolidate fluency of transcription and sentence construction, have the opportunity to write for a variety of purposes and audiences. Pupils use engaging stimulus materials and books to inspire ideas for writing and then explore how to best communicate ideas through grammatical structures and language choice. We ensure children are immersed in a rich language environment that values speaking and listening as a vital part of the writing process.
The writing sequence includes immersion, looking at models and idea gathering, modelling, collecting vocabulary, practising sentence constructions and planning, writing and editing texts. This ensures that pupils are ready to compose and craft their own pieces of writing during and at the end of a unit. Where appropriate, pupils receive additional scaffolding to ensure full access to the curriculum.
Editing
Pupils are encouraged to re-read and edit their work in response to feedback and during the writing process.
Impact
The impact of the English curriculum on our children is that they progress, experience sustained learning and transferrable skills which will enable them to access the whole curriculum.
The writing skills they acquire will allow all pupils to communicate well, accurately and creatively in a range of styles for a range of purposes and audiences.
We aim for children to leave New Close Primary School with a love of reading and writing and high aspirations to continue this love of reading and writing into the next phase of their academic journey.
Click here to see all our curriculum policies, including our English Policy
Click here to see all our Long Term Plans, including English
Click here to see all our Skills and Knowledge Progressions, including English
