ENGLISH (READING & WRITING)
We had some amazing entries for our World Book Day potato book character competition!
Year 6 and Reception Reading Buddies are settling down in the library to share a book.
Reception and Year One enjoying a visit from Louise Wannier - author of the book 'Tree Spirits' - in Featherbank Forest.
gALLERY
Reading Intent
At Featherbank, our ambition is to inspire and nurture a life-long love of reading and language in our children - not only to support their learning across the curriculum, but also to enrich their lives and provide them with the opportunity to forge their own aspirations for the future.
Using books as a basis for learning, pleasure, talk and play, we aim to develop fluent, inquisitive readers at Featherbank and ensure that each and every child can achieve their full potential.
Throughout our teaching of reading, we strive to value and celebrate diversity and promote children's spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
Reading Implementation
At Featherbank, we believe that a child's ability to read, write and spell is built upon a secure foundation in a robust synthetic phonics provision. At Featherbank, we follow our own phonics scheme from Reception to Year Two, which teaches the children the 44 different sounds in the English language and the 175+ corresponding graphemes. The English and Phonics Leaders work closely together to ensure that phonics strongly underpins teachers’ knowledge and is woven in to our whole school approach to reading, writing and spelling.
In EYFS and Year One, Phonics is taught through discreet phonic lessons where children are explicitly taught how to read graphemes to say a phoneme and how to blend these to read words. The children also learn how to read common exception words and high frequency words that they will encounter when reading books. Lessons are taught five times a week for 20 minutes. (See Phonics page for further details.) Phonics lessons begin in the first week of the EYFS; this enables children to start learning how to blend to read words straight away, and gives them the opportunity to read decodable books within the first three weeks of school. Children apply their phonic skills for reading through three consecutive 15 minute reading lessons, ensuring children have regular opportunity to read decodable sentences. The sequence of lessons focus on decoding at word level, fluency of sentence reading and comprehension of the text..
Each child in Reception, Year One and Year Two will have access to a fully phonetically decodable reading book matched to their stage of phonics and a specially selected story book, which they can share with their adult at home. When appropriate, children may also take home a colour banded book from our reading scheme in order to extend their reading. For any children working on Phases 2 to 6 in Year Three or beyond, we provide individualised intervention alongside a reading book from our KS2 Phonics Reading Scheme to diminish gaps and accelerate progress for these children..
In Year Two, children continue the reading lesson cycle that they are familiar with from Year One, until the teacher assesses that they are ready to transition to whole-class reading.
In Year Two and Key Stage Two, reading is taught four times a week on a whole-class basis, with support and scaffolding as appropriate. In Year Two and Lower KS2, lessons last for 30 minutes, and in Upper KS2, lessons last for 40 minutes. Reading lessons focus on supporting children to construct a robust mental model of the text, using the following comprehension strategies:
- Activating and using background knowledge
- Generating and asking questions
- Making predictions
- Visualising
- Monitoring comprehension
- Summarising
We teach our whole-class Reading lessons through our Reading Spine. Each class’s Reading Spine is designed to promote diversity and cultural capital by ensuring that we are providing a broad and balanced coverage of fiction and non-fiction texts, songs and poetry across all genres and spanning a range of authors, cultures and dates. Children will encounter texts whereby the depth of their ideas or language allows for rich discussion and study. Children will encounter characters, situations and viewpoints that reflect their own lives but allow them, too, to understand the lives of others.
Reading Impact
At the end of KS1, we want our children to independently use their phonic knowledge to read fluently by sounding out and blending unfamiliar words without support. Children should be reading age-appropriate books with increasing fluency and expression. They should make predictions and inferences based on what they have read themselves and what has been read to them by others.
By the end of KS2, children should be confident in the skills they have been taught, showing excellent progress from their starting point. They should be able to confidently read aloud with intonation and expression with the ability to evaluate, comment and compare the different styles of writers. Children will have a working knowledge of a range of authors and genres which provide them with cultural understanding and a model in which to basis their own learning on and use as a reference point throughout the rest of their education and beyond.
Formative assessments take place throughout the year and the English Leader performs monitoring on a regular basis; gaps in children’s learning are identified and interventions are put in place to help fill them.
Summative assessments take place on a termly basis. These help pupil progress meetings to focus on the support that is needed for individual children. Pupil provision mapping is conducted, tracked, monitored and guided by the Head Teacher to support the ongoing progress of pupils to maintain high standards of learning, and both support and challenge pupils in their learning.
Writing Intent
At Featherbank, we believe in inspiring children through writing, prizing its immense power to shape and change our way of thinking, our self-expression and our understanding of what the world means to us. We aim to teach children the craft of writing (including a developed and fluent cursive style of handwriting) in order to develop in them the confidence and skills to write well for a range of purposes and audiences. Our writing curriculum aims to develop the ambitious and articulate writers that exists in each and every one of our children.
Through our broad and balanced curriculum, we systematically teach spelling, handwriting, grammar and punctuation to ensure accuracy within creativity, and we develop children's writing, and enjoyment of writing, in many different ways so that, as they grow, their learning is enriched with skills and opportunities which enable them to become confident, independent writers for life.
Writing IMpact
By the end of KS1, children should be able to apply their phonics knowledge by using strategies taught in Phonics lessons, and write simple coherent narratives independently.
In KS2, children should be able to write effectively for a range of audiences and purposes. Children should use a range of punctuation, tenses and dialogue in their writing effectively alongside appropriate grammar and vocabulary. Handwriting should be fluent and in a joined, cursive style.
Formative assessments take place throughout the year and the English Leader performs monitoring on a regular basis; gaps in children’s learning are identified and interventions are put in place to help fill them.
Across school, we aim for all children to produce three pieces of assessed writing each half term in order to create a robust system of assessment. These help pupil progress meetings to focus on the support that is needed for individual children. Pupil provision mapping is conducted, tracked, monitored and guided by the Head Teacher to support the ongoing progress of pupils to maintain high standards of learning, and both support and challenge pupils in their learning.
English Policy
We follow the National Curriculum and regularly review our school's English Policy to ensure that we are placing our children's learning at the heart of everything we do.
Useful websites and links to support your child with reading and writing
Top Tips for Younger and Older Readers
Ideas to help you to read with your child.
A website providing videos to inspire writing.
Support for Struggling Readers
Sections for parents and teachers on developing the skills of readers as well as advice on how to overcome barriers to reading.
A website providing writing prompts and inspiration for writing.
A really useful site with up to date information about great books to read.
Lots of recommended reads and book lists.