The English curriculum is made up of many strands: reading, writing, spelling, punctuation, grammar, handwriting, speaking & listening. Teachers plan from the National Curriculum, promote a love of reading and deliver high-quality input to embed the key skills within English.

We understand that the reading and writing of Standard English, alongside proficient language development, is the key to unlocking the rest of the academic curriculum. 85% of the curriculum requires children to be able to read in order to access the learning. With this in mind, we put great emphasis and investment into the teaching of early reading.

By the age of 11, we aim for children to be able to:

• read, write and speak with confidence, fluency and good understanding, drawing upon a range of independent strategies to self-monitor and correct;
• have an interest in a wide range of reading materials and read spontaneously for enjoyment and pleasure;
• acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language;
• be familiar with, by understanding the structure and language features of, a range of non-narrative and narrative forms;
• be able to model their own writing on these familiar styles and forms according to the context, purpose of, and audience for, their writing;
• draw upon increasing powers of imagination, inventiveness, initiative and critical thinking in all aspects of their literacy experiences, including being reflective writers (writing with a reader’s eye and reading with a writer’s eye);
• at least meet age related expectations in all aspects of English.
• speak clearly and convey ideas confidently using Standard English;
• develop their understanding through speculating, hypothesising and exploring ideas, enabling them to clarify their thinking as well as organise their ideas for writing;
• read fluently and understand extended prose (both fiction and non-fiction);
• write at length, with accurate spelling, punctuation, and correct use of grammar for a range of purposes and audiences.

Reading

At Deanery CE Primary School, reading is at the heart of our learning. We know that a love of reading is the biggest indicator of future academic success and believe that one of the most important gifts we can give a child is the power to read and share books. When a child learns to read, a new world opens up and children move quickly from learning to read to reading to learn.
Our approach and commitment to reading is the same across the school, we use Little Wandle as our phonics scheme and in Reception to Year 2 use the Little Wandle reading books to accompany the phonics teaching.
In each year group as the age and stage of the reader changes the frequency and the way in which books are allocated differs. The following details the process for each year group.

There are resources to support parents here: https://www.littlewandle.org.uk/resources/for-parents/

Nursery

A sharing book will be chosen by your child each week. This is a book for you to read to your child that has been selected from the school library and will be your child’s choice. We ask parents to encourage discussion and book talk, make it fun and sound exciting by changing your voice. Talk with your child about the book, introduce new and exciting language and encourage your child to use new vocabulary. Make up some sentences together and describe things you see. The aim of the sharing book is to foster a love of books, language and story.

Reception and Year 1

Children read the Little Wandle reading books following the letters and sounds phonic phases three times a week in reading practise sessions. Children are assigned reading books that are fully decodable when they are able to recognise the phonic sounds and are able to blend the words. There is a taught structure for the reading book which includes a four part read, three times in school and then at home. Each reading session at school, has a specific focus:  session 1- decoding,  session 2 – prosody, session 3 comprehension. Children are then assigned an eBook of the same title as a fourth read known as the ‘celebration read at home’. Children will be reading to at least 95% accuracy for their celebration read at home.
In addition children also choose a sharing book. This is a book for you to read to your child that has been selected from the school library and will be your child’s choice. We ask parents to encourage discussion and book talk, make it fun and sound exciting by changing your voice. Talk with your child about the book, introduce new and exciting language and encourage your child to use new vocabulary. The aim of the sharing book is to foster a love of books, language and story.

Year 2 Autumn Term

Children read the Little Wandle reading books following the letters and sounds phonic phases three times a week in reading practise sessions. Children are assigned reading books that are fully decodable when they are able to recognise the phonic sounds and are able to blend the words. There is a taught structure for the reading book which includes a four part read, three times in school and then at home. Each reading session has a specific focus:  session 1- decoding, session 2 – prosody, session 3 comprehension. Children are then assigned an eBook of the same title as a fourth read known as the ‘celebration read at home’. Children will be reading to at least 95% accuracy for their celebration read at home.
In addition children also choose a sharing book. This is a book for you to read to your child that has been selected from the school library and will be your child’s choice. We ask parents to encourage discussion and book talk, make it fun and sound exciting by changing your voice. Talk with your child about the book, introduce new and exciting language and encourage your child to use new vocabulary. The aim of the sharing book is to foster a love of books, language and story.

Year 2 Spring term and Summer Term

Each class has a 45 minute whole class reading lesson three times a week and study two linked texts within a week which may be linked by genre, author and theme. Each session consists of around 15 minutes of the children reading and then 30 minutes of discussion and tasks. During these sessions we cover a breadth of texts - fiction, non-fiction, poetry, songs and picture books and focus on the VIPERS reading skills - vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval, summarising and sequencing.

All children should have the opportunity to read to the teacher across these sessions.
Children begin with a short retrieval quiz (quick start) that shouldn’t require much, if any, look-ing back over the text. After this, any unfamiliar or potentially limiting vocabulary is explored and read around for a few minutes. This is accompanied with pictures/visuals where possible for a deeper understanding. Deeper questions or activities are then presented one at a time. In the form of individual thinking, partnered talk and solo work.

Children in Year 2 should be reading for approximately 10 minutes each night. This may be reading to an adult, with an adult or independently. We would also encourage children to discuss the book and predict future events in order to develop their skills of inference and deduction.
For the majority of children in Year 2, they will be on a colour band; this is matched to their ability.  Each child is unique and will progress through the colour bands at different rates, staff monitor children’s progress and will move them onto another colour band as and when appropriate.
Within each colour band is a wide range of texts and genres as well as a range of texts of varying difficulty.  On the whole, children are given the freedom to choose books that they think they will enjoy – therefore some books may seem harder or easier than others.  Teachers will keep an eye on the texts chosen to ensure that your child is being appropriately challenged. We also encourage children to bring in books, magazines, comics etc from home.  Magazines and comics can often encourage reluctant readers and give children confidence to read for pleasure.

Key Stage 2

Each year group has a 45 minute whole class reading lesson three times a week and study three linked texts within a week which may be linked by genre, author and theme. Each ses-sion consists of around 15 minutes of the children reading and then 30 minutes of discussion and tasks. During these sessions, we cover a breadth of texts - fiction, non-fiction, poetry, songs and picture books and focus on the VIPERS reading skills - vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval, summarising and sequencing.

All children should have the opportunity to read to the teacher across these sessions.
Children begin with a short retrieval quiz (quick start) that shouldn’t require much, if any, look-ing back over the text. After this, any unfamiliar or potentially limiting vocabulary is explored and read around for a few minutes. This is accompanied with pictures/visuals where possible for a deeper understanding. Deeper questions or activities are then presented one at a time. In the form of individual thinking, partnered talk and solo work.

It is important that we still hear our KS2 children read and take opportunities to discuss their texts in order to develop their higher-level reading and comprehension skills.  Children in KS2 should be reading for approximately 20 minutes each night. This may be reading to an adult, with an adult or independently. We would also encourage children to discuss the book, predict future events in order to develop their skills of inference and deduction. Children should read their own reading book 3 times per week, 1 topic related text per week and 1 other text e.g. current affairs, recipe, text of parents’ choice. The topic related text and suggested current affairs text will be posted on Google Classrooms weekly.
For the majority of children in KS2 they will be on a colour band, this is matched to their ability.  Each child is unique and will therefore progress through the colour bands at different rates, staff monitor children’s progress and will move them onto another colour band as and when appropriate.

Within each colour band is a wide range of texts and genres as well as a range of texts of varying difficulty.  On the whole, children are given the freedom to choose books that they think they will enjoy – therefore some books may seem harder or easier than others.  Teachers will keep an eye on the texts chosen to ensure that your child is being appropriately challenged. We also encourage children to bring in books, magazines, comics etc from home.  Magazines and comics can often encourage reluctant readers and give children confidence to read for pleasure. 

 

Grammar 

Is knowing how the parts of a sentence work together and how sentences are linked to each other. 

Primary school children are now introduced to fairly complicated grammatical concepts  in their primary-school learning journey and are expected to work to much higher standards when it comes to grammar and punctuation; they are expected to identify parts of speech and write confidently using tricky grammatical concepts.

They are also expected to know and use grammatical terminology which has been updated to be in line with traditional grammatical vocabulary (Connectives are now divided into conjunctions, prepositions and adverbs; definite and indefinite articles are now classed as determiners).

We teach our children grammar in context within writing and prepare children for writing by modelling the ideas, grammar or techniques of writing.

Spelling  

An essential trait of literate people is being able to spell effectively and spelling is valued in society above all other writing conventions (Turnbill, 2000).  We want to develop spelling ’stickability’, and therefore teach dedicated spelling lessons from Y2 to Y6 which continue to use and build on our strong phonic foundations, look for patterns and rules and apply them to our independent writing.