English

Reading is like breathing in; writing like breathing out.

Curriculum Intent

Reading for pleasure is a key indicator of a child’s future success. At Buckingham Primary School, we aim for all our children to have a love of reading and for them to become life-long readers. Therefore, we ensure that all children have access to a wide range of different books, both fiction and non-fiction and that there are opportunities to enjoy and learn different poems.

Our teachers regularly talk about books in lessons and they recommend books they have read to children. Daily, there are opportunities for children to discuss their favourite authors and make their own book recommendations. In assemblies, there are further opportunities for children to share the books they are reading with a wider audience. As well as celebrating authors and their stories and poems in school, we are fortunate to regularly host authors who help to inspire and motivate our children to read. In the last few years we have welcomed: Nadia Shireen, Ross Welford, Laura Noakes, Kim Hillyard, Jenny McLachlan, Benjamin Dean and Aisling Fowler.

At Buckingham, we intend our children to:

• Be able to talk with enthusiasm about books and their favourite authors.
• Be confident when speaking and to be able to express their own ideas.
• Broaden their vocabulary through exploring new and ambitious vocabulary.
• To have the skills to write clearly and accurately.
• Be able to write with grammatical accuracy and be able to apply spelling patterns accurately.
• Identify their own areas for improvement in their writing, editing their writing during and after the writing process.

How we teach English (Implementation)

Reading

At Buckingham, all children have weekly access to our school library where they can choose to take home a wide variety of different books, such as non-fiction books, poetry books and graphic novels. Our library is also made available to parents and carers once a week after school. In our Key Stage 2 playground, we have a little library shed where children can chose to borrow a book to read or take home with them. To support our younger readers, our Year Six children act as ‘Reading Buddies’ and read with our Year One readers. Similarly, a group of our Year Six children also read books to our Year Two classes.

Phonics in EYFS AND KS1

Early reading and spelling skills are taught using ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds’, a phased teaching programme which determines systematic, high quality phonics work, beginning in Nursery and continuing into Reception and Key Stage 2. In the early phases, the focus is on children exploring sounds, increasing their stock of words and improving their command of dialogue. Teaching staff provide children with a broad and rich language experience, using the power of stories, rhythm, rhyme, drama and song to develop both excitement and skills. Phonic skills are taught as the first approach to reading and spelling.

These skills are taught through:

• Systematic phonics teaching using a clear system of progression
• Discrete, daily sessions for all children in Reception and Year 1, with ample opportunities to apply phonic knowledge and skills throughout the day
• A multi-sensory approach using songs, actions, movement and games
• Explicit links made between decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling), with both skills being taught and applied alongside each other
• Ongoing monitoring and assessment of every child’s progress 

Tricky words

Alongside phonic decoding, children are taught to read and spell ‘tricky words’. These are words that cannot be sounded out and blended because they have unusual or as yet untaught grapheme-phoneme correspondences and, therefore, they have to be learnt by recognition.

Class Guided Reading

Guided reading takes place with a small group of pupils in EYFS and KS1. It enables the teacher to work with a group of pupils for a sustained period of time to develop their reading skills. Teachers use this as an opportunity to both teach and assess word level, sentence level and text level learning objectives.

 In Y2 and KS2, a whole class approach to guided reading is the model used for most pupils. These teacher-led guided reading sessions happen four times a week and last for a minimum of thirty minutes.

Class Readers

From Year Two to Year Six all children will read a ‘class reader’ daily with their class teacher. This allows children to experience a wonderful range of authors, experience different genres and enjoy sharing a book as part of their daily routine.

Writing

At Buckingham, we use poetry, songs, classic texts and books by contemporary authors, to teach the necessary knowledge and skills of the curriculum.  We divide up the writing curriculum into ‘units of work’.

These units of work will last anywhere between two to four weeks to complete. Using a book, story or poem, as the foundation for learning, the class teacher will plan written outcomes during this time. The class teacher will provide example texts for the children to read and discuss. These texts will incorporate the correct text features of the genre and the skills and knowledge outlined in the national curriculum. In the lessons leading up to the first reading of the exemplar, the children will immerse themselves in the text they are studying. They will be taught, and have the opportunity to explore and practise, any text features or spelling, punctuation and grammar conventions that will subsequently be identified in the example texts.

The Success Criteria

Having read and discussed the example texts, the children will be able to identify how the author has been successful (in relation to the genre, purpose of the writing, and literary techniques used). This information can then be used to inform a success criteria which can be used to help guide the children during the writing process. The children will use the success criteria when writing and it is referred to regularly by the class teacher during the writing process.

 Planning

Prior to any writing, the children will have the opportunity to talk through their ideas together and then plan their work. These plans can then be reviewed by the class teacher, learning partner and any necessary changes, suggested.

Modelling Purposeful Writing

The process of writing is taught using a ‘shared writing model’. This is where the class teacher models the process of writing with the class. They will write two or three sentences, thinking aloud their thought process when writing, before asking the children to suggest

When modelling the writing process the class teacher will:

• Communicate purpose- how the learning builds on from previous learning and how it will be applied
• Modelling the process involved in writing, e.g. oral rehearsal of a whole sentence, re-reading and checking for mistakes
• Demonstrate the application of phonic and spelling strategies during shared writing, e.g. segmenting sounds, looking for words within words etc.
• Model enthusiasm and thoughtfulness through body language and specific praise.