English

Our aim for English is for all children to be confident speakers, listeners, readers and writers. We teach English using Talk 4 Writing, reading for pleasure, SPaG and Little Wandle

Rationale – Please click here

Intent:

Our overarching intention is to ensure our English curriculum prepares students for life in the real world so they are able to function as independent individuals in society. To do this we intend to:

Give our students a secure functional reading and writing skills so they can understand and make sense of the world around them.

Give our students a secure functional reading and writing age so they are ready to build on these skills and to apply them to learning in other subjects.

Develop and apply key literacy and SPAG skills within their writing.

Support the development of clear letter formation.

Develop their writing for a purpose in a variety of forms (Letter, Email, Diary Entry, Poem)

Expose our students to a range of texts/genres including fiction and nonfiction, designed to strengthen and embed the skills in reading and writing.

Give our students the skills to explore different text types and enable them to develop their comprehension skills.

Develop reading skills through Little Wandle and Benchmark programmes, exposing our students to high quality reading resources, opening up our student’s imagination so everyone reads for pleasure.

Develop clear speaking and listening skills, so our students can start and maintain meaningful conversation.

Ensure that all of our children can read to at least Phase 5 phonics before they start secondary school.

Implementation:

Overview

We communicate the high value we place on literacy and reading skills by teaching these daily.

The English curriculum follows a developmental model, which is evidenced through planning, resources and assessment for each individual class and student.

CPD is available to all teaching and non-teaching staff. We schedule regular refresher training for our key programmes; Talk for Writing, Little Wandle throughout the academic year.

Through regular formative and summative assessment, we track gaps in knowledge. This is then targeted through high quality teaching and learning. Planning cycles are adapted to match the needs of particular groups and individuals.

Vocabulary and key writing skills are practiced within other curriculum areas.

Writing

We follow the Talk 4 Writing programme with all of our students. As students continue through the school their writing is developed using clear and specific performance objectives.

Quality writing is created by first expanding and developing students’ oral language skills, teaching the necessary steps for sentence, paragraph and text construction.

The ‘Talk for Writing’ approach enables students to read and write independently for a variety of audiences and purposes within different text types and themes. It offers a ‘scaffolded’ approach to writing that offers confidence to fearful writers and a creative springboard to those who enjoy language.

Reading

Early reading across the school is delivered through the Little Wandle phonics programme, with accompanying reading books.

Individual reading books for students learning phonics are banded to match the Little Wandle levels.

After phonics pupils move to reading books graded with Benchmarking.

Reading is promoted daily with dedicated reading slots during the day.

Daily reading at home is promoted through the admissions process, reading logs, daily reward for this activity and through regular contact with parents.

Reading lessons include 2 dedicated comprehension lessons and a paired reading aloud activity and time dedicated to reading for pleasure. Comprehension is taught first as a group (we do) and then, when children are ready, independently (you do)

Each Talk 4 Writing unit has a comprehension lesson that is based on understanding the model text and answering questions

Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar

Some spelling errors are addressed through marking or verbal feedback.

Correct spelling is supported through the use of phonics sound charts.

Children beyond Phonics practice Common Exception Words daily (once they are secure in these, they practice other spellings for the appropriate year group)

Talk 4 Writing starter activities are used to generate text specific vocabulary.

Talk 4 Writing starter activities can be used to practice elements of punctuation and grammar

Teachers use ‘My Turn, Your Turn’ to offer students multiple opportunities to hear, see and use new words.

A punctuation and grammar focus links to the objectives of the current attainment year for the group. They are also linked to the focussed text style.

Staff are trained in phonics and students are encourage to use this within their reading and writing in all subjects.

Speaking and Listening

Our curriculum offers opportunities for hot seating, role play and discussion-based activities.

Teachers model effective communication skills within all lessons and everyday encounters.

Teachers select questions that are open-ended to allow for opportunities for authentic student response.

Teachers use ‘the power of the pause’ to develop students’ responses.

Teachers use Rosenshine’s questioning principles to encourage greater participation and more in-depth answers

Impact

Our students will leave with the literacy skills they need to access their next stage of education.

Our students can communicate with clear meaning, they can make requests, voice their own needs and ask and respond to questions

Our students can apply their knowledge to different situations in everyday life, for example, reading something on TV, road signs, online information, listening to the radio.

Our students are able to read information to develop their subject knowledge in all areas of the curriculum and further education.

Talk 4 Writing

With Talk 4 Writing, children first learn a text aurally to develop a long-term memory of vocabulary and sentence structures. This supports their confidence to read and write independently.  Children can work independently because they become very familiar with the words and structures they are using. 

The stages of Talk 4 Writing are:

1

‘Cold Write’ – what can I already write without any help?

2

WOW lesson – a hook to get children excited about the text topic 

3

The imitation stage includes: learning the text aurally, learning to use the text map, discussing key vocabulary, hot-seating characters, ‘reading as a reader’ – comprehension questions about the text, ‘reading as a writer’ – creating a toolkit and highlighting the text, bespoke grammar lessons. 

4

The innovation stage – looking at what changes we can make to the text we now know well. Editing the text map to make it our own. Writing that new text with support.

5

The invention stage or ‘Hot Write’ – what can I now write without any help and is it better than the ‘Cold Write’ I did at the start. Make a plan (own text map) and write independently.

This process takes 2-3 weeks to complete so children will learn many texts over the year the range of texts covers fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

Working this way helps pupils become more confident when writing in other lessons.

Friday Free Write

Alongside the T4W English curriculum, all children across the school take part in a Friday Free Write to build confidence and motivation for extended writing. The lesson is not structures heavily and children are encouraged to write at length, without interruption.

Please click for more information on the Talk 4 Write Curriculum Progression

Spelling

In addition to Talk for Writing, we have introduced spelling practice for children who have completed phonics. We begin by focussing on Common Exception Words, then move on to other words within their spelling year group as required. Spellings are practiced at the beginning of every reading lesson.

Reading

We want every child to have a love of reading and books.  Many children come to our school with a negative view of themselves as readers.  We use high quality reading books at the right level for the child.  Children read regularly in school and at home.  This gives them the skills and confidence to make great progress. 

Reading lessons include weekly ‘reading for pleasure’ sessions where children are encouraged to choose a book they might enjoy from a selection of books in the classroom. This encourages children to enjoy books freely, explore books that appeal to them and develop an independent love of reading. 

Children are read high-quality texts daily by a member of staff. Staff are trained in pace, exploring vocabulary and generating a small amount of discussion around the book, as well as encouraging enjoyment of stories.  

Reading is a key life-long skill.   We teach children to be able to read a text out loud, e.g. to sound out the words and say them (phonics).  We also teach them to understand the meaning of what they are reading (comprehension). Each child reads to an adult at least twice a week. Children identified as being in the lowest 20% for reading will read with an adult daily.  We encourage the children to read at home with their parents and carers.  Because we feel reading at home is so important, we award the pupils points for doing this. We check reading progress termly, with a standardised comprehension test in term 6.

We also encourage reading in other ways, including our reading raffle. For each entry from home into their reading record, children receive a raffle ticket which goes into our raffle box in each Friday assembly.  At the end of each week the raffle is drawn and two children win a book of their choice. Each year we take part in World Book Day, when children are encouraged to dress up as their favourite character.  The winner from each class wins a book voucher to use on a trip to Waterstones. 

In terms 1 and 5, we use Star Reader to assess reading progress across the year. At the end of each term, we assess reading levels using ‘benchmarking’ for children who have completed Phonics.  

SPaG (Spelling Punctuation and Grammar)

Children who have completed our Phonics programme move on to daily spelling and reading comprehension lessons. Children complete termly spelling tests in ‘Common Exception Words’ at first. Each Monday, children are given 5 weekly spellings specific to each child’s needs. They practice these throughout the week in time for a spelling test on Fridays where the children have the opportunity to mark their own 5-word test and monitor and take responsibility for their own progress.

Reading Comprehension

Along with encouraging comprehension through questioning when children read aloud to adults regularly, we also teach reading comprehension skills explicitly to children who have completed Phonics. We follow the Cracking Comprehension programme. This includes group sessions in which adults and children answer questions together about a text on the interactive whiteboard; individual supported sessions where children complete a similar, written comprehension assessment with help from the teacher; comprehension quizzes online which children can complete independently and check their answers; and termly reading assessments to support future teaching.  

Cracking Comprehension curriculum progression

Year 3 Year 4

Year 5 Year 6

Reading comprehension is also taught through Talk 4 Writing, in which we discuss vocabulary and answer comprehension questions about our key texts. Story time sessions where adults read to children often incorporate comprehension check-ins from the adults to check the students are understanding what is happening in the story.  

Annual formal assessments of comprehension take place regularly.  

Reading for Pleasure

We want children to be able to talk about their favourite books and authors. In order to inspire the children, we have created reading book lists that classes have enjoyed reading through in their story time. Since the introduction of our first book list, children have been able to share their enjoyment and opinions about popular books and also make links between books by the same author.

Here is an example of our first book list, introduced last year:

Little Wandle Phonics

Sometimes children find it tricky to acquire the phonic skills to become a competent reader. At North Star 265° we use the Little Wandle Rapid Catch-up programme to help children gain the phonic knowledge they need as quickly as possible. Children with more complex needs access the Little Wandle SEN programme.

Children are taught in successive phases and we have plenty of independent reading books clearly matched to each phase. We also have a selection of phonics-level books aimed at older readers which we use to practice reading with the children within the phonics lessons.

Children who are identified for needing support through this programme are taught daily in small groups.

How is it delivered?

On entry to North Star 265˚, we assess whether a child is still in need of phonic lessons. If they are, we assess them using the school phonics assessment.

The Phonics Lead will then place the child in the correct phonics group. It is important that all children are working at their phonic level and learn the phonemes and red words in the correct order.

In KS1 phonics is delivered three times a week. There will be some movement between classes to ensure that children are being taught at the correct level, however this movement is kept to a minimum. At the end of every term, staff assess their phonics groups. The Phonics Lead then uses these assessments to make the necessary changes to the phonics groups for the following term.

Reading Books

In line with the latest OFSTED guidance, no child will have reading book containing sounds above their phonic knowledge.

Reading books for children accessing Little Wandle Phonics lessons

Children are assessed regularly according to the Little Wandle Assessment process. The outcome of these assessments gives a level of phonics book that the child can read independently. This is usually at a slightly lower level than the Phase they are working on. This is so that they can practice phonemes and graphemes that they already know. For example, if your child has recently started Phase 4 Phonics, they may be reading a book at level 3.1 or 3.2.

Phase 1

There is only 1 level in Phase 1. These are wordless books and marked with a white ‘1’ sticker.

Phase 2

There are 5 levels in phase 2. These go from 2.1 to 2.5 and are labelled with pink stickers and numbers.

Phase 3

There are 2 levels in Phase 3. These go from 3.1 to 3.2 and are labelled with blue stickers and numbers.

Phase 4

There are 2 levels in Phase 4. These go from 4.1 to 4.2 and are labelled with green stickers and numbers.

Phase 5

There are 5 levels in Phase 5. These go from 5.1 to 5.5 and are labelled with orange stickers and numbers.

After this, pupil’s reading level will be checked regularly and children will continue to move through banded reading levels.