English at Friars

Our Aims

Through our English curriculum we want our children to:

Use their speaking and listening skills to solve problems, share ideas, make decisions and reflect upon their learning
Read with fluency, understanding and enjoyment
Use their comprehension skills to find and use information, infer, summarise, predict and enhance their vocabulary choices
Use their writing as a means of communicating experience, knowledge and understanding
Write imaginatively and accurately for a variety of purposes
Spell words independently, using appropriate strategies and patterns to attempt unknown words
Have a legible and fluent handwriting style
Know what they need to do to further improve their reading and writing

Curriculum and Planning

At Friars Primary School and Nursery, English is an integral part of our curriculum.

We use the 2014 National Curriculum, alongside year group objectives from Jonathon Bond and Pie Corbett progression sheets, to plan engaging units of work based upon a theme and the different genres of writing.

We aim to make those units as engaging as possible. English grammar, handwriting and spelling skills are embedded every day through our English work, early morning work and our connected curriculum.

Speaking and Listening

Opportunities for speaking and listening are planned into all curriculum subjects in order for our children to develop their skills and grow in confidence.

From the early years, the children use language to imagine and recreate roles, take part in active listening sessions and interact with others in free play activities.

In Key Stage 1, we build on pupil’s prior learning in speaking and listening. They are encouraged to speak according to the context, with consideration for their audience, use oral language imaginatively and express their ideas and feelings within drama and classroom discussions. The children are taught to work effectively and collaboratively in groups and join in discussions making relevant contributions.

In Key Stage 2, the children develop the ability to speak in a range of contexts with an increased sense of audience and purpose. We develop the pupil’s ability to respond appropriately to others by having opportunities for children to critically self and peer assess. We also use drama as an exciting way to use expressive speech and to deepen their understanding of the content and purpose of what they are studying.

Part of our ‘Friars Formula’ for good teaching includes the use of 3-tick answers which are used across the school to allow children to actively ‘think’ more deeply and expand on original ideas and other children’s responses.

All children take an active role in an annual class assembly where they present their work to parents and carers.

English Long Term Plan

Reading

Early Reading – Phonics

Reading at Friars starts in our Nursery where children participate in ‘Foundations for Phonics’ activities with a trained adult. These sessions will provide them with firm foundations ready for when they join school and they will be ready to learn grapheme-phoneme correspondence.

In Reception and Key Stage 1, our children begin to learn to read and spell with daily phonics lessons, using a systematic synthetic phonics programme called Little Wandle Letters and Sounds.

In Year 1, the children will take the Phonics Screening Check, which is used to confirm that children have learned phonic decoding to an age-appropriate standard. Children who have not reached this level will receive extra support to ensure that they can improve their phoneme recognition and decoding skills, and they will then have the opportunity to retake the phonics screening check in Year 2.

Phonics continues into early Year 2, where children continue to grow the code and learn a wide range of alternative graphemes for the phonemes they have previously learnt. Children will only exit the programme once they have successfully completed the programme and are secure with the programme content.

Tricky words from the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds programme are sent home in children’s reading record books and they are expected to know these on sight by the time they complete the programme. In addition to tricky words, children are required to learn sets of high frequency and common exception words. These sets of words progress based and are closely linked to the phonics knowledge the children have learnt within school.

Whole class reading

In the Early Years and Year 1, children develop their reading within class lessons by participating in shared reading activities Using carefully chosen texts, children read texts together, share ideas and complete work based around the focus book.

Towards the end of Year 2 and across KS2, Friars Primary School and Nursery has adopted ‘Layered Reading’ (whole class reading) as its primary source of teaching reading and comprehension skills. This is taught as part of our English lessons. Each year group has a set of carefully chosen, challenging but age appropriate texts, which are then used for mixed ability, paired reading and modelled reading by the class teacher. The children analyse the text in detail to answer greater depth questions and develop their skills of comprehension. All of our comprehension work is in line with our comprehension strategy, which focuses on 8 core skills; answering literal questions, inferences, word level, predicting, summarising, grammar and punctuation, comparing and contrasting and text organisation.

Class teachers will also look to embed reading and comprehension skills across the connected curriculum where appropriate.

Individual Reading

Children in Nursery take home a ‘sharing book’ which is changed fortnightly during their ‘Stay and Play’ sessions.

Children in Reception also have a fortnightly sharing book which they choose themselves from our school library.

In addition to this book, and before the children have their first assessment, the children take home wordless books which encourage book skills, oral blending and initial sound recognition. Once children have been assessed and been matched to a decodable book, they will move on to decodable books.

Children in Year 1 and Year 2 take home two books per week; a reading book and a sharing book. The reading book is matched to the child’s secure phonic knowledge and is chosen against their most recent assessments. The child should be able to read this book with 90% fluency.

Individual reading books are changed weekly and are always read in school before they go home. The sharing book, is like a library book and is sent home for the adult to read to the child. Children are not expected to read this text.

Children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 will read in group reading sessions. Within these sessions children will learn to decode to read, read with prosody (fluency and expression) and develop comprehension skills to build understanding of the stories they have read, using a text to help them find an answer.

Once children become fluent readers, towards the end of KS1 and into KS2, children read texts using Reading Eggs. This is an online programme that provides children with age related texts, set by the class teacher, based upon the children’s most recent assessments.

In addition to Reading Eggs, children have the opportunity to read the class set of ‘Roving Books’. These books have been specifically selected for us by a reading consultant with many of the titles being selected around the theme of ‘diversity’ to allow our pupils to experience different types of reading from different cultures and backgrounds. The children can select their books from their class library.

Most of our reading assessment in KS2 is completed via whole class layered reading sessions or comprehension assessment tests. All children are heard reading 1:1 by a teacher or LSA weekly.

Across the school, each class teacher has identified those children needing additional reading support. This can take several different forms depending on the need of the child including; extra daily or bi-weekly reading support, Nessy, Reading Egg lessons or phonics intervention.

Should you have any concerns about your child’s reading, please speak to their class teacher.

Writing

At Friars Primary School and Nursery, a range of teaching techniques are used in order to develop writing skills.

Helicopter stories – story scribing

Helicopter stories are used in EYFS and KS1 to allow children to ‘tell’ their stories which are then scribed by an adult. Each story can then be acted out for the child to ‘see’ their completed work.

Story mapping – Children produce a story map detailing key events of their story to use as a visual writing prompt for their independent writing.

Modelled Writing - The teacher acts as the writer and shares his/her thoughts as the writing is produced.

Shared Writing - This is a teacher-led writing activity with child involvement. The children offer ideas to a whole class piece of writing which can then be edited and improved to model the correct way of structuring their ideas.

Guided writing - Guided writing takes place in whole class or small groups. The children writing with teachers intervening as appropriate to support the development of their writing skills.

Scaffolded Writing – Children work independently using a prompt such as sentence starters

Independent Writing - From EYFS onwards, the children are given opportunities to write independently for a range of purposes. All children are expected to be writing extended pieces regularly.

Marking and Feedback - Verbal feedback may be give during the lesson or written feedback may be provided to give children the opportunity to expand, extend or improve their piece of work.

Editing - In KS2, following next step marking, children respond by correcting and modifying their work in green pen.

Connected curriculum - Where relevant, opportunities to write across the curriculum are given to enable children to apply the skills from their English lesson cross a range of different contexts.

This could include a post card from a different country in geography, a historical report or an explanation text in science.

Spelling

Spelling is always a key focus of our writing at Friars Primary School.

We use the Rising Stars spelling scheme meaning that from Years 1-6 the children are taught the spelling rules identified for their year group against the 2014 National Curriculum.

A different ‘spelling rule’ is taught each week and these are sent home to practise further. Weekly spelling tests are then taken in each class.

Grammar and Punctuation

Specific grammar and punctuation elements may be taught discreetly as separate lessons or as part of the main English lesson.

Children are then given the opportunity to apply these skills in writing sessions and across the connected curriculum.

Core grammar and punctuation elements are also regularly reinforced through our early morning work activities.

Handwriting

At Friars we follow the Pen Pals Handwriting Scheme.

In EYFS and Key Stage 1 children are taught how to form letters correctly. When they have achieved correct formation, they are introduced to letter joins.

In Key Stage 2, the children practise joining letters correctly and develop their own handwriting style. Once the children can join their handwriting correctly and consistently, they are awarded a ‘Pen Licence’ allowing them to write using a handwriting pen.

If you would like to support your child with their handwriting at home, please speak to the class teacher who will be happy to help.

Whole School Events

The school encourages our pupils to take part in several whole school events across the year. These have included BBC’s 500 words competition, The Friars and Portico Spelling Bee and World Book Day celebrations as part of our book week.