Welcome to our English Area

English lessons at Stanhope Primary provide opportunities for children to develop their speaking and listening as well as Reading and Writing skills. Our aim is for ALL children to access a range of learning opportunities to achieve their full potential in English. Engaging and exciting novels are used to capture the interests of children and carefully planned lessons are taught to allow pupils to write in a wide variety of contexts. All aspects of English are taught in line with the Primary National Curriculum.

Writing at Stanhope

At Stanhope, we believe that equipping children with the skills and knowledge to write, and a love of doing so, is one of the key aspects in allowing our children to achieve of their journey through education and beyond that. With this in the forefront of our minds and implementing the writing process our children follow throughout school, we ensure that writing is embedded throughout the curriculum.

Intent

At Stanhope Primary School, we want our children to communicate effectively through writing. This involves the children writing clearly and accurately whilst applying their knowledge and understanding of a range of text types. Children in school are encouraged to write for a variety of purposes, audiences and contexts within English lessons.

Pupils at Stanhope are exposed to a wide vocabulary not only in English lessons but across our entire curriculum. We want all children to have a solid understanding of grammar and spelling and encourage children to apply their knowledge through all writing activities planned and taught.

Implementation

At Stanhope Primary School, we promote a positive writing environment from EYFS to Year 6. We strive to ensure that pupils throughout their time at Stanhope meet or exceed their age related expectations.

In our English lessons, we carefully select focused texts each half term in order to plan opportunities for a range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Children’s writing is celebrated using both classroom and whole school display boards. To engage all pupils in writing, we ensure quality texts are dedicated to each year group across the school. These are updated yearly in order to incorporate new novels from a range of authors and to best support the needs and interests of the current cohort. The quality texts taught always promote an appropriate plot and characters which encourage children when writing independently.

The teaching of grammar and spelling is taught both discretely as well as embedded across the curriculum. Continuous teaching of grammar and spelling ensures that all children develop and utilise their knowledge and understanding when writing. Staff plan and teach using Spelling Shed and coverage of the Plazoom grammar curriculum is determined by the National Curriculum.

Letter formation is taught in EYFS and continues throughout the school in Read Write Inc sessions as well as handwriting sessions. In whole school assemblies at the end of the month, children’s handwriting and presentation is celebrated with a Handwriter of the Month certificate.

Throughout the academic year, we participate in whole school celebrations including Roald Dahl Day, National Poetry Day, World Book Day and International Writing Day. These celebrations allow pupils to create pieces of writing for a wide range of genres and purposes.

Every pupil within KS1 and KS2 receives daily feedback either verbally or in writing in their books. This allows any misconceptions to be addressed as well as appropriate challenges. In addition, pupils are given opportunities to self-assess or peer assess their writing.

At Stanhope Primary School. staff assess children’s writing every term using year group specific objectives. Objectives within Year 2 and Year 6 reflect the national interim assessments for KS1 and KS2. We have a KS1 and a KS2 moderator for the local authority within school who both moderate writing within school and oversee the termly moderation process.

At Stanhope, we follow the South Tyneside Writing Process in years 1-6 to help structure children’s writing over a number of weeks. We ensure that in each term, every year group complete a piece of fiction, non-fiction/poetry writing. The writing scheme has the following order:

• Features of a text– In this lesson children look at the features of the given text, they add that they already know in pencil and add to it using black pen as they move through the unit
• Exemplar Texts– In this lesson children look at existing texts at age appropriate level. Compare them to each other and look at the similarities and differences between.
• Magpie– In this lesson children look back at the exemplar texts and magpie words and phrases that they found interesting.
• SPaG– In this lesson children will work on a topic they need as a class to improve. They will carry out a task and then apply their knowledge to a piece of writing.
• Shared Write– In this lesson children work with the teacher modelling how a good piece of writing looks. They will learn to use features of the writing appropriate and have a go at writing examples down and using them in a supported write.
• Plan– In this lesson children will plan a piece of writing using success criteria and give format.
• Independent Write– In this lesson children complete their independent writing using their plan as reference.
• Edit and Redraft– In this lesson children go back through their marked work and look for things they would like to improve. The piece of writing will then be rewritten (amount progresses through each year group)
• Extended Write– Writing of same genre completed 2-3 weeks after unit has been completed. This helps to recap prior learning and to assess how much has been retained by children.

Impact

At Stanhope Primary School, our pupils develop their communication skills and express themselves during written work. Children are able to write across a range of genres and can adapt their writing for a specific audience. Pupils will make good progress from their own personal starting points within EYFS.

By the end of Year 6, children are prepared for their transition to secondary education. This allows them to further develop their writing skills and complete more challenging tasks. Most importantly at Stanhope, students develop a love for writing and are well equipped for future life.

Learning to spell is tremendously useful if we want children to become confident writers. When we ask children to write, we are asking them to call upon many skills and children who struggle to spell, may find it difficult to organise their thoughts to produce a high quality piece of work. It is also true that children will be inclined to limit their vocabulary choices if they have limited spelling skills.

At Stanhope, we believe that providing our children with the spelling strategies to enable them to be confident and more adventurous in their word choices is essential. To enable this, each classroom has displayed year group appropriate support and lessons are carefully planned to ensure that every child is given the best opportunities to develop their spelling skills.

In school, Year 1 to Year 6 follow the Rising Stars Spelling Scheme. Weekly sessions are delivered weekly to meet the National Curriculum objectives for each year group. The children in Key Stage One and Two, will receive spellings every week to learn at home. These are tested at the end of the week during a spelling test in the classroom. Spellings are in line with the National Curriculum and the Statutory Spellings Lists.

English – Reading

Intent, Implementation and Impact

Intent

At Stanhope Primary School, we believe that Reading is a fundamental aspect of our curriculum. We believe that Reading is the key to success and is a lifelong skill to succeed in life. At Stanhope, we promote a love for learning in order to encourage children to take interest in reading a variety of books.

Throughout their time at school, pupils develop and expand their comprehension skills whilst becoming fluent readers. We expect our pupils to read both fluently and widely and encourage all children to express their thoughts and opinions. At school, pupils have access to a wide range of text types and genres from a variety of authors and can independently select their books for pleasure.

Implementation

At Stanhope Primary School, we teach daily phonics using the Read Write Inc (RWI) programme in order to build important foundations for lifelong readers. The teaching of phonics is a high priority within Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and Key Stage One (KS1).

In Nursery, our children begin to develop their listening skills and start to discriminate between sounds, recognising rhythm and rhyme.

In Reception, our children are introduced to Set 1 sounds following our RWI programme. As they progress to Year 1, the children are taught both Set 2 and Set 3 sounds. Every day, staff systematically teach pupils the relationship between sounds and spelling patterns.

All pupils within KS1 and children in KS2, who require further support in phonics, are taught in groups, which are determined by termly RWI assessments. Children within KS1 and KS2 may also receive targeted interventions weekly in order to ‘keep up’.

In order to develop fluency in Reading, each child in EYFS receive weekly Reading books. Pupils within KS1 as well as those children in KS2, who are accessing daily RWI sessions, all receive a copy of the RWI phonics book they have been reading in their sessions as well as a corresponding RWI Book Bag Book.

Children with KS2 have access to a wide range of books all banded to show progression. The children have access to Oxford Reading Tree, TreeTops, Project-X and Songbirds.

Children across all phases also have access to Active Learn ‘Reading Bugs’ in where they can read levelled books appropriate to their need and ‘free readers’ to promote Reading for Pleasure.

At Stanhope Primary School, we always encourage a love of reading through our classroom libraries and main school library. We participate in special events each academic year including Roald Dahl Day, World Book Day as well as Book Fair and Book Clubs. We also link books to our Protected Characteristics and Stanhope Strength to learn through stories.

Impact

At Stanhope Primary School, we expect our students to leave at the end of Year 6 with excellent communication skills that they can transfer into secondary school and later life.

It is important that children achieve through enthusiasm and engagement as well as attainment and progress. Regardless of each child’s starting points, we provide endless opportunities to develop their speaking and listening skills as well as their thinking and problem solving.

At the end of primary school, we hope that all children are enthusiastic about reading. We expect all pupils to read fluently across a wide range of genres including fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

Reading

At Stanhope, reading is at the forefront of our curriculum and appears most within our timetables and across the school day. Our goal is to ensure that by the time children leave school they acquire the reading skills and language knowledge to read increasingly complex books and are fluent, confident, lifelong readers who read for pleasure and for information. As a school we are determined that every child learns to read. We prioritise how to read in order to ‘read to learn’, focusing on both word reading and comprehension as children progress through school. To ensure that children can access the curriculum, we place a high focus on ‘learning to read’ starting from our foundation stages.

Children regularly hear good modelling from staff members through sharing of a class novel. Pupils will experience a variety of texts and will be taught to appreciate a range of styles, genres and themes, including those of other cultures and opportunities for cross-curricular work will be taken. We actively encourage children’s interest in books by creating an inviting atmosphere in which to read and provide a wide range of different reading material available. All classrooms provide a range of age appropriate and level appropriate high quality texts, which children can read regularly within a designated class time.

Pupils receive the age appropriate teaching of reading skills:

FS1/2

• Daily Letters and Sounds
• Read Write Inc.
• Guided Reading

KS1

• Daily Read Write Inc
• Guided Reading sessions
• Class Novels
• Discrete Reading Comprehension lessons (Year 2 VIPERs)

KS2

• Daily Guided Reading sessions
• Discrete Reading Comprehension lessons (VIPERs)
• Class Novels

Questioning within guided reading and reading comprehension lessons focus on reading fluency, linguistic knowledge and knowledge of the world, themes and conventions, comprehension, inference and language for effect.

Home Reading Scheme

FS2 – RWI

KS1 – RWI/Oxford Reading Tree/Accelerated Reader

KS2 – Accelerated Reading Level (a mixture of fiction/non-fiction/classics/graphic novels)

Reading Eggs

Children within Key Stage One have the opportunity to access Reading Eggs – both at school and at home. Reading Eggs is an online program that makes learning to read interesting and engaging for all children. It has fantastic reading games and activities. Your child will be provided with their own unique login to access this program.

https://readingeggs.co.uk/

Star Reading/Accelerated Reader/MyOn

Children year 2 and up have access to our Star Reading Programme at both school and home.

5-A-Day

The importance of reading for the education and overall life opportunities for children cannot be overstated. With this in mind, we strive to ensure that reading permeates throughout our school day, with multiple opportunities given for children to engage with texts or apply skills associated with reading. As a result, we developed a ‘Five-a-day’ approach to reading – in other words every child is given five distinct reading opportunities (at least) through the course of a typical day:

• Early morning reading– Children given opportunities to read on arrival at school. Every child will read with a member of staff at least once a week. Lowest 20% & targets at least 3 times a week.
• Assemblies– Children exposed to further stories of current affairs and SMSC themes. We also celebrate reading in award assemblies.
• Reading lessons– Children to take part in RWI or Guided reading sessions every day.
• Curriculum subjects– Children to have linked texts and books available for all subject in class library and in lesson time.
• Story time– Time to read the class novel from long term plan. In addition to class novels, children have access to 5 ‘Linked Texts’ each term. These are shorter stories/books that link directly to each year group’s curriculum topics. Teachers may wish to use whole texts or extracts from these texts within reading lessons or as a stimulus for curriculum lessons.

We believe that regular opportunities for children to be immersed in reading and reading skills through high quality texts, in an environment that promotes and celebrates reading, helps craft independent thinkers who share our love of books.

Other Opportunities for Reading

• All pupils will be offered the opportunity to attend the yearly book fair.
• Topic weeks such as Roald Dahl Day and World Book Day.
• Pupils from FS to Year 6 have access to the school library and are encouraged to change their books regularly.
• Out of school library visits.
• Visits from authors/workshops.

This is the link for Parent films to explain the phonics program used in school and how you can help their child at home.

Useful websites:

A series of information and tutorial videos explaining the basics of Read Write Inc. Phonics. Your child is learning to read with this programme, these videos will help you support them at home:

http://www.ruthmiskin.com/en/parents/

Interactive games linked to each phase and a useful section on information for parents:

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk

BBC CBeebies series of animated programmes featuring the Alphablocks characters – great for practising sounds and blending words:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/alphablocks