INTENT
At Heene School, the teaching of English is the foundation of our curriculum as we recognise it underpins pupils’ learning across all subjects. We believe that a high-quality education in English will teach pupils to speak, read and write fluently so they can clearly communicate their ideas and emotions. We strive to ensure that when children leave Heene they are confident, enthusiastic readers and writers. A love of literacy is encouraged through the exposure to a wide range of high-quality texts, both classic and contemporary. Carefully chosen texts, from an array of outstanding authors and illustrators, are used to develop pupils’ literacy skills and knowledge. At Heene, reading and writing are inextricably linked and we therefore aim to nurture children who read as writers and write as readers.
Reading
At Heene Primary School, we aim to inspire and instil an appreciation of reading so that all children choose to read for both pleasure and information. We aspire to develop children’s reading habits so they read widely and often and, by teaching explicit, progressive reading skills, enable them to form an excellent understanding of the various texts they encounter. We recognise that children who read for pleasure are more likely to reach higher levels of attainment (throughout the curriculum and beyond) than those who do not. We therefore offer our pupils a wide variety of high quality texts and other reading resources and seek to nurture an intrinsic motivation to read for all pupils. We intend that all pupils leave Heene School being able to read easily, fluently and with a good understanding and appreciation of what they read.
At Heene we pride ourselves on striving to become a ‘reading school’. All adults in our school community are encouraged to read children’s literature, talk about their reading experiences and share a genuine enthusiasm for reading with all pupils. This enables teaching staff to not only widen their knowledge of children’s literature, but more importantly, be able to talk about and recommend texts to children that match and, when appropriate, challenge their reading level.
Writing
At Heene, we strive to empower all children with the ability to express themselves through writing. We want our children to be able to communicate their knowledge, ideas and emotions clearly and effectively. To achieve this, we promote the understanding that writing is a process that is most effectively done when the children write as readers. In practice, this involves teachers at Heene providing children with a real purpose and audience for their writing.
Writing at Heene is not only a daily discrete lesson, but it is embedded as a key priority across our entire curriculum. We encourage the children to show their best levels of writing in all lessons which involves having high expectations of presentation and handwriting. By promoting this pride in writing, we believe the children of Heene will consider themselves to be competent writers by the time they leave at the end of Year 6.
IMPLEMENTATION
Reading
EYFS classrooms have daily reading time which involves teachers reading with small groups of pupils while other children have time to read, share and become immersed in books. Pupils in Early Years are immersed in a reading and ‘book’ culture. High quality texts are available for children to choose, look at and read independently.
The children are read to at least once daily, sometimes more. Staff read with the children twice on a three week circle- one week as a small group reading session and then two weeks of reading 1:1.
Our aim is that, by the end of Early Years, children can read and understand simple sentences. They are able to use phonic knowledge to decode regular words of more than one syllable and read them aloud accurately. They may also be able to read some common irregular words.
In Year 1 all pupils are taught to apply their phonics knowledge and skills as a route to decoding words. They revise and consolidate the GPCs as well as the common exception words that they encounter in the EYRs. (see Phonics Intent Statement). Pupils are taught and encouraged to develop their pleasure in texts and motivation for reading through a rich curriculum involving a wide range of high quality fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
Children in Year 2 are taught to continue to apply their phonic knowledge and skills accurately until their reading has become fluent. Teachers do this by ensuring that pupils’ books match their reading abilities as well as allowing them to re-read favourite texts in order to build fluency and self-confidence.
During KS1 pupils are empowered to discuss texts by developing their knowledge of language terms, both in sentence and textual contexts. This can also include talking about narratives: characters’ actions or behaviour within stories or discussing vocabulary that an author has chosen, and why. We aim to ensure all pupils understand the books they read and the texts they listen to through a range of ‘book-talk activities’ including: drawing on personal experiences and knowledge, checking texts make sense to them, predicting what may happen next and drawing inferences on the basis of what is evident in the text.
The teaching of reading in KS2 focuses not only on accuracy, fluency and stamina but on developing higher order reading skills, being able to summarise sections of texts in their own words, explain how they deduce information and justify their views about what they have read. The teaching and learning of reading continues to focus on comprehension with differing levels of challenge being determined by increasing complexity of writing within texts.
Daily reading sessions ensure children have quiet time within class to be able to read independently or with an adult on a one-to-one basis. Teachers are able to assess pupils’ decoding skills and fluency as well as have the time to engage in a wide variety of book-talk with the children.
Whole-class reading sessions, with a shared text, enable explicit reading skills to be taught, i.e. inference/deduction, comprehension, language understanding and higher order reading skills such as skimming and scanning. These sessions also allow teachers to model and teach skills such as summarising, questioning, critiquing of etc.
SEND/disadvantaged pupils are further supported through regular one-to-one reading using the ‘Rapid Reading’ intervention system. This regular and personally-matched reading encourages focussed progression and enables pupils to develop their understanding of vocabulary and whole texts. This provision is additional to the quality first teaching from class teachers who are able to personalise learning targets in consultation with all adults who read with the children at school. By monitoring pupils’ Reading Journals, class teachers identify those children for whom there is little evidence of rich and valuable reading experiences at home. These children are prioritised for regular one-to-one reading with adults in school.
In Years 5 and 6, as the teaching of word-reading skills lessens, pupils are immersed in a range of different types of writing and taught to discuss conventions such as metaphorical and figurative language, use of similes, analogy, imagery and style. Pupils are encouraged to discuss and evaluate how both historical and contemporary authors use such conventions and how they have an impact on the reader.
Pupils are taught to recognise themes in what they read, how to compare characters and to consider different accounts and viewpoints of the same event.
Reading skills such as retrieval of information are applied in areas of the curriculum such as History and Science so pupils develop their independent research skills.
Writing
At Heene, we believe that for children to become competent writers they must understand the parts of the writing process, have a clear grasp of purpose and audience for writing and have the technical skills to write their ideas clearly and effectively. We know the importance of regular, extended opportunities for purposeful writing in ensuring our children have the independence and stamina needed to be confident writers.
To achieve this, the role of our teachers is to guide children through the different stages of the writing process: immersion in high-quality texts, generating and planning ideas, drafting extended writing, editing by proof-reading and up-levelling and finally publishing their final versions of their writing to their audience. At the end of this process, we aim to set up opportunities for the children to get feedback from their audience about their writing to embed the idea that we write for the reader. All year groups follow these stages of the writing process to help children develop a growing awareness of the reader and the effect of their writing on them. By following the same approach throughout, children become familiar with the process and are able to adapt it to lots of different types of writing; both within English sessions and foundation subjects.
In order for children to progress in the skills they need to be an effective writer, learning related to grammar and punctuation is not taught in isolation but is instead embedded into the studying of high-quality texts. This enables our children to see the purpose of grammar and punctuation and how talented authors use it to improve their writing. Therefore, our children are exposed to these skills in a way so that they know why they are learning them and how they can use them successfully in their own writing. This learning happens alongside short and regular spelling and handwriting lessons where children are taught to take responsibility for these skills and high standards of these are expected in the writing completed in all subjects, not solely English. The current learning of all grammar, punctuation and spelling skills are displayed on each class’ learning wall which children are encouraged to use as a resource to help with their writing in all subjects.
As a child moves through the school, decisions they make in their writing increase and independence grows. In Early Years and Year 1, key stages of the writing process, such as using ideas booklets to plan writing, are adult-led with the intention that children are able to use these skills more independently from Year 2 onwards.
Having high expectations of writing is a collective priority across our school. It is our aim that all children take pride in their work and are supported to be the best writers they can be by using consistent approaches and making clear links between learning.
