English

English:

At Farrington Gurney Primary, we recognise the central importance of English, as a subject in its own right, and as a way to promote a positive attitude to reading, writing, speaking and listening. We believe that developing as a confident reader is a fundamental entitlement for every individual pupil. Reading is the key that opens up the whole curriculum and is critical to pupils’ academic success. Reading also provides powerful cultural capital for pupils to help them to understand the world around them, and to become well-informed and knowledgeable citizens. Making sure that pupils learn to read is the heart of the school’s equalities duty and mission as a church school, where all pupils become the best they can be. We recognise the moral imperative to develop pupils as capable readers a foundation for learning and to help them to overcome disadvantage through education:

Our Intent:

Believe that every child can learn to read and write well – with the right teaching and encouragement
Place reading, and books, at the heart of our curriculum
Invest in our staff training so that they gain expertise in teaching pupils to read.
Build time for all children to read independently, for pleasure and to be read to within the school day.
Inspire our pupils by enriching the curriculum with author visits, reading competitions and by building their knowledge of a broad range of authors and literature
Involve parents to encourage our school reading culture to extend to the home environment
Have developed a clear and sequential whole school strategy for teaching pupils to decode words, understand and enjoy texts.
Write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
Acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language

Reading and Phonics

Progression and sequence

Through reading, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development. Reading also enables pupils both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know. All the skills of language are essential to participating fully as a member of society; pupils, therefore, who do not learn to speak, read and write fluently and confidently are effectively disenfranchised. The national curriculum for English aims to ensure that all pupils:

read easily, fluently and with good understanding
develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage

At Farrington Gurney Primary School, phonics will be emphasised in the early teaching of reading. We prioritise the teaching of phonics and we aim for all children to master the phonetic code as quickly as possible. We teach phonics daily in Reception and Year 1, it is taught through a highly structured synthetic phonic approach. We follow a scheme called Unlocking Letters and Sounds and the priority is that children develop their knowledge of the 26 letters in the alphabet, the 44 phonemes and 140 letter combinations.

Click the image for more information about our teaching of phonics:

At the end of Year 1 the children undergo a statutory phonics screening check. Children who have not yet met the expected threshold continue to receive phonics support.

Rigorous assessment and review throughout the program will ensure that targeted support is given to all.

Once reading, we intend to encourage all pupils to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and reading, to gain knowledge across the curriculum and develop their comprehension skills. It is our intention to ensure that, by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read fluently and with confidence.

Reading:

We use Unlocking Letters and Sounds as our way of delivering our phonics lessons.

Reading is taught daily.

In Key Stage 1, children progress through the reading scheme, which is linked to their phonics level.

In Key Stage 2 we use whole class and individual reading. For whole class reading, we have a quality text per term which we use as our guided reading book. We use Accelerated Reader to encourage and build independent reading skills and track progress accurately.

See below lists of books that we recommend for each year group:

Writing:

Our main vehicle for delivering our writing curriculum is through The Write Stuff. This is used as a basis to teach children quality vocabulary and grammatical structures from Reception upwards. It works by breaking writing down into smaller parts, which are then heavily modelled by the teachers before the children repeatedly practise the writing skills over time.

We have our own Spelling Scheme which is taught from Year 2 - 6 and is taught daily in KS1 and 3 times per week in KS2. Children learn spelling patterns and rules, statutory words, common exceptions and personal spellings. Our scheme teaches spelling in a 'Little-but-often' structure which allows children to revisit and review, learn new strategies and apply. It also includes a variety of strategies to practise so that children with different learning styles can find out what works well for them.

Additional Information

Grammar

Here is our progression document from grammar: HERE

The Write Stuff:

You can find out more about The Write Stuff and purchase the book by visiting the website:

https://www.thetrainingspace.co.uk

Primary English Curriculum:

Our writing lessons, alongside our reading lessons, are carefully structured to deliver the complete English National Curriculum. You can see this document here along with our English Policy:

Primary English Curriculum

Useful Links:

There is a wealth of amazing websites out there to support writing, both at home and at school. Below is a selection of some of our favourites.

Bitesize

Bitesize has videos, games, guides and lockdown lessons available.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zt3rkqt

Literacy Shed

Check out the range of ‘sheds’ in their ‘What’s New?’ section.

https://www.literacyshed.com/

Vocabulary Ninja

There are some great resources here to help expand vocabulary.

https://vocabularyninja.co.uk/