English
Intent
Our English subject intent contributes to our school intent ‘to improve the life chances of every child’. At Dallow Primary School, in English, we aim to provide all our pupils with rich and varied learning opportunities that help them to become confident and enthusiastic learners. We want our pupils 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 our pupils how important their reading, writing, speaking and listening skills will be in the real world. By giving this context to their learning, the pupils understand the value of English to them now and in their futures.
Implementation
How English is taught at Dallow
At Dallow, we want all of our pupils to be capable readers, writers, spellers and speakers, who can transfer their English skills to other curriculum subjects and who are prepared for the next steps in their education. Our English lessons develop pupils’ spoken language, reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary. We teach our pupils to speak clearly, to convey their ideas fluently and confidently and to ask questions; the use of a ‘book curriculum’ across the school supports this as this can provide some excellent oracy opportunities, stretch and challenge for our pupils. A book curriculum has allowed the teachers to personalise learning by choosing novels and authors to engage and excite the pupils. It has enabled a wider range of writing of opportunities and an improvement in the quality of writing.
Reading
At Dallow, we give our pupils the best start we can by teaching them to read as soon as possible so that they can develop a love of reading that will provide them with the skills they need for the future. We have ‘Class Reader Ethos’ where each class has a storybook that is specifically chosen to engage the children. This may, in some cases, be the one chosen for the book curriculum for their English lessons. Story time is compulsory across our school and we share a range of high-quality engaging texts.
We use the Read, Write Inc. programme to teach phonics at our school. Phonics is a way of teaching pupils how to read and write. It helps pupils to hear, identify and use different sounds that distinguish one word from another in the English language. Pupils in year R -2 follow the RWI programme during the English lessons. RWI phonics is continued as an intervention in years 3 and 4 for pupils who are below the expected age for reading. Pupils who are below the age related expectations for reading in year 5 & 6, are supported through the ‘Fresh Start’ intervention. Fresh Start is a catch-up literacy intervention that provides systematic and rigorous practice in phonics that enables fluency in reading.
We use ‘Accelerated Reader’ to challenge and monitor the reading of our pupils from years 2 to 6. Accelerated Reader (AR) is a software tool that assesses a pupil’s reading level, suggests titles of books at that level, and then assesses whether a pupil has completed reading the book by asking a series of questions; it then gives immediate feedback to students about their success. The AR programme has proved to be very successful in developing reading skills and raising standards in literacy here at Dallow.
Through AR, we aim to continue the promotion of a lifelong love of reading in children, regardless of their ability. Each pupil (KS1 and KS2) begin by taking a diagnostic STAR reading test, which then gives them a Reading Age and Book Level to guide them to text suited to their abilities. They then choose, read and answer questions and reflect on their book. Here at Dallow, STAR reading tests are set up six times during the year and show clear progress in the children's reading abilities.
We have adopted the ‘VIPERS’ method to teach the skills of reading outlined in the National Curriculum and the KS1 and KS2 test domains. VIPERS (Vocabulary, Infer, Predict, Explain, Retrieve, Sequence or Summarise) is an anagram to aid the recall of the 6 reading domains as part of the UK’s reading curriculum. They are the key areas which we feel pupils need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts. VIPERS is used in years 2-6 in our daily dedicated reading sessions, where we cover a wide variety of both fiction and non-fiction texts and help to advance the pupils comprehension skills. To further challenge thinking, in years 5 and 6 we use the A.P.E system (Answer it! Prove it! Explain It!) for both reading and writing sessions.
We know the value of excellent vocabulary and this is developed and practised across our curriculum constantly. We use ‘Vocabulary Ninja’, ‘Word of the Day’ and ‘Word of the Week’ to encourage pupils to explore and discuss their ideas and to develop more sophisticated vocabulary.
Right from the beginning of their time at Dallow, pupils’ access a range of high-quality engaging texts across a range of genres. We promote a love for reading through a range of extra activities including whole school Writing Challenges, Reading competitions and author visits. Our pupils are encouraged to read for pleasure and to read widely through our reading scheme and school library. Every fortnight they have access to the school library where they can explore a variety of books that can be chosen to take home and shared with their families. Pupils are provided with opportunities to participate in local reading competitions including the summer reading challenge and take part in Book fairs. We celebrate ‘World Book Day’ and dress up in favourite characters from stories and encourage pupils to share a range of books. We encourage our parents to support our pupils with reading and provide them with reading guidance and clear expectations about reading at home. We have weekly timetabled reading sessions for each year group where parents are invited to come and read with their child.
Writing
We develop writing skills so that our pupils have the stamina and ability to write at the age expected standard. To support pupils in moving towards independent writing we provide a wide range of activities including the use of film and imagery, music, ICT, modelled, shared and guided writing, peer assessment, self-assessment and discussion. We provide varied and exciting opportunities for writing for a purpose and we encourage pupils to see themselves as authors and poets. We promote the importance of written work by providing a writing purpose and provide opportunities for pupils' writing to be read aloud and listened to by an audience. A range of fiction and non-fiction genres is taught, as well as poetry, to ensure pupils are aware of the features of different text types. Once pupils have imitated and innovated a quality text, they move to the independent application of planning and producing their own writing.
Spelling, vocabulary, grammar and punctuation
Through daily reading and writing lessons and story time, we naturally enhance our pupils’ vocabulary through their reading and writing by providing them with opportunities to understand the relationships between words, how to understand nuances in meaning, and how to develop their understanding of, and ability to use, figurative language. We teach our pupils how to work out and clarify the meanings of unknown words and words with more than one meaning through our teaching of phonics and spellings. We teach our pupils to use dictionaries and to explore new words as word of the day and word of the week. We model high standards of English both spoken and written throughout the day in all areas of our curriculum and ensure pupils control their speaking and writing consciously and use Standard English. Pupils are provided with exciting lessons to use the elements of spelling, grammar and punctuation and learn the correct grammatical terms in English. All pupils have a spelling shed login, where they are able to independently learn spellings.
Handwriting
At Dallow, we are proud of our pupils’ handwriting and we place high value on pupils taking pride and care over their work. We use Letter-join as the basis of our handwriting ensuring pupils are taught to form cursive letters when writing. Cursive handwriting is a style of joined up handwriting in which the letters are connected to help you write faster. Handwriting is a basic skill that influences the quality of work throughout the curriculum. At the end of key stage 1, pupils should have the ability to produce cursive, legible and eventually speedy handwriting.
In the Early Years, there is a big emphasis upon gross motor skills and then fine motor skills. We use a range of resources to practice these basic skills. This moves into correct letter and number formation with a focus on both upper and lower case letters. We use cursive writing to ensure a consistent and progressive approach to the teaching and practice of handwriting.
Impact
What will this look like?
By the time children leave our school they will:
- Make good progress from their KS1 results
- Have a love for reading and read for pleasure
- Be able to read and understand high quality texts with fluency
- Be able communicate effectively and have a breath of vocabulary
- Have a love for writing and write for enjoyment
- Be able to produce written work in all areas of the curriculum to a high standard
- Be confident to write for a range of different purposes
- Ready to continue their learning journey in secondary school
English Writing Progression Grid