English
Phonics
At Stocks Green Primary School, we believe that learning to read and establishing a love of books is an essential part of being a literacy learner. Therefore, we value the importance phonics has in the development of early reading and early writing. We deliver highly effective phonics lessons within Early Years Foundation Stage and Key Stage One via daily lessons. Children in Key Stage Two continue to be supported with their basic acquisition of phonics where necessary. Phonics is also used to underpin the teaching of spelling in Key Stage One and Key Stage Two.
Our phonics objectives are:
- To have timetabled, daily phonics lessons in EYFS, Year One and Year Two.
- To develop a good knowledge of phonemes and graphemes.
- To be able to blend phonemes to decode (read) a word.
- To be able to segment and blend to be able to spell a word.
- To be able to transfer the skills from phonics into everyday learning, particularly writing and spelling.
- To be confident with segmenting and blending pseudo (alien / made up) words in preparation for the statutory Key Stage One phonics screen.
From the Spring Term 2022, the Department for Education recommended that all schools use a validated phonics scheme to teach phonics. In our school, we are using ‘Sounds Write’ across EYFS and Key Stage 1. In Year 3 – 6 the ‘Sounds Write’ approach is used to underpin the teaching of spelling.
Our Reading Scheme
As part of the reading scheme, we have decodable phonics books which link to the scheme which we follow (Sounds Write). These are used throughout EYFS and Key Stage 1. We also have other decodable and non-decodable books that form part of our reading scheme, this includes Oxford Reading Tree and Floppy Phonics. We believe having a consistent reading scheme supports us to assess the children’s reading abilities and enable them to progress and show evidence of progression through the book levels. At our school, we understand the importance of inclusion and differentiation, so we ensure we have a range of books which suit the needs of children with SEN or children who are reluctant readers.
Reading Lessons
Our reading lessons are based on the research undertaken by Christopher Such in his book ‘The Art and Science of Primary Reading.’ Every class from Year 2 to Year 6 undertakes a thirty minute reading session each day. This is in addition to their English session. Texts are chosen to challenge pupils and offer a wide variety of fiction, non-fiction and poetry across the school, as well as introduce the children to a wide range of authors. This we call our Reading Spine. The reading sessions include fluency practice, extended reading and cloze reading. Each element is prioritised based on the needs of the class in each year group.
The school’s Reading Spine, Curriculum Statement and Progression of Knowledge and Skills can be found below. The curriculum statement provides an in-depth look at the school’s approach to the intent, implementation and impact of its reading curriculum. This includes, how it is planned, the pedagogical approach to delivery as well as how it is assessed for impact.
Reading Progression of Knowledge and Skills
Writing
At Stocks Green Primary School, we believe that writing is an essential skills that unlocks all areas of the curriculum. Further to this, we believe that writing for a purpose about an inspiring event or moment of intrigue, hooks children in and further fuels their want to write. Our pedagogical approach to teaching writing is based on these concepts.
We intend that all pupils become reflective writers who have the confidence to independently improve their work. Throughout the writing curriculum, we aim that children develop a love of text and creativity. We intend for this to transfer to their ability to explore genres through their own writing. We intend that pupils present their ideas clearly using cursive handwriting, accurate syntax, spelling and grammar. We aim for all pupils to become resilient and independent in their writing with the confidence to take risks and explore different styles. As they move through our curriculum, we aim for pupils to become autonomous writers with a sense of their own style.
Writing Lessons
In order for children to become effective writers, we believe that children need to be shows effective models and have the opportunity to explore grammatical, language and structural features of a genre. This all takes place before the children get to write their own version of a genre, based on a class model. As children move through the writing process, they will learn how to effectively edit and improve their texts before writing a final, more independent, piece. To achieve this, we teach the children through a series of lesson types. These can be seen below:
- Engage – in the ‘engage’ stage children explore an effective text in detail. They may learn the text through a ‘text map’, perform it or play games whilst learning the sentence patterns. This stage is enriched with drama, hot seating and exploration of the style of the text learnt. The end of this stage involves the pupils identifying the key features of the genre, ready to develop this knowledge in the next stage.
- Develop – in the ‘develop’ stage pupils learn specific word level, sentence level and grammatical features of the writing genre. They have opportunities to explore, develop and practice the specific features of the genre ready to use in their own piece of writing. Teachers model how to use these features effectively and provide adaptive teaching to allow all pupils to experience success.
- Magpie – in the ‘magpie’ stage teachers model how to effectively plan a text using the key features studied in the develop phase. They model how to magpie, develop and manipulate sentence patterns and structures from the originally learnt effective piece of writing from the ‘engage’ stage. Time is spent modelling the metacognitive processes involved in being an effective writer as well as the writing process itself. This stage also involves the teaching of effective proof-reading and editing skills as well as the teacher providing structured feedback that the pupils can action in the upcoming ‘create’ stage
- Build - in the ‘build’ stage teachers address any whole class areas for development based on the marking of the piece created in the ‘magpie’ stage. Specific lessons may be delivered to address these areas. Pupils are then briefly ‘engaged’ in a new topic so they can write confidently about it during the ‘create’ stage.
- Create – in the ‘create’ stage pupils create a new piece of writing in the style of the genre taught. They use feedback from the piece they created in the ‘magpie’ stage to improve their writing and style further. This piece includes less modelling from the class teacher and a higher level of independent practice.
Writing becomes increasing independent as children move through the year and across the school. Children are taught to see themselves as writers and use this to create the best writing possible.
The school’s Writing Curriculum Statement, Progression of Knowledge and Skills, Writing Curriculum by Genres can be found below. The Curriculum Statement provides an in-depth look at the school’s approach to the intent, implementation and impact of its reading curriculum. This includes, how it is planned, the pedagogical approach to delivery as well as how it is assessed for impact. The Writing Curriculum by Genres
shows how the school develops children’s knowledge of each genre of writing across the school as well as the tools that children should build up in their ‘Writer’s Toolkit.’
Progression of Knowledge and Skills
Writing Curriculum by Genres
Year 1 English Genre and Grammar
Year 2 English Genre and Grammar
Year 3 English Genre and Grammar
Year 4 English Genre and Grammar