English

Learning to read is the most important thing your child will learn at our school. Everything else depends on it, so we put as much energy as we possibly can into making sure that every single child learns to read as quickly as possible and we continue this ambition throughout the school as we strive to inspire children to read for pleasure.

We want your child to love reading – and to want to read for themselves. This is why we put our efforts into making sure they develop a love of books as well as simply learning to read. Reading is at the heart of our curriculum and intertwines with our writing curriculum as we inspire the next generation of writers.

Intent

Our Writing curriculum is taught through a coherent and well-sequenced Long Term Plan which outlines curriculum objectives to be introduced, developed and embedded each term.  In this way, we provide opportunities for children to continually revisit learning that is taught to them in a clear sequence.  At Leigh we teach every term from a high quality literary text and teach explicit reading skills and writing skills in every lesson. We believe that all pupils should be taught the key skills and techniques to be able to communicate effectively in their writing and understand how other writers have done the same to inspire their audience. 

Our ambitious writing curriculum ensures pupils build upon prior knowledge to master writing and develop their ideas. 

Our English Curriculum that enables pupils to:

• develop and express a rich and deep understanding of the wider world;
• explore and respond to moral, ethical and social questions;
• make important links between subjects, to deepen and explore their understanding of other curriculum areas;
• be prepared for success at secondary level and beyond;

A cohesive and well-sequenced curriculum that ensures:

• breadth and depth is achieved through well-sequenced, cumulative units which incorporate revisiting of learning;
• pupils understand the purpose for writing and develop conceptual fluency;
• an ability to write to a high standard across the curriculum;
• pupils are explicitly taught the conventions and grammatical structures of writing and develop confidence in using these independently in extended pieces;
  • teaching is firmly based upon current research relating to cognitive science:
  • direct explicit teaching of skills and isolated writing encounters to ‘hone’ particular skills;
  • extended writing sequences to embed and practice;
  • prior learning revisited;
  • direct and explicit teaching of Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary;
  • High quality and ambitious texts to model and exemplify conventions and grammatical structures.

Handwriting

This academic year, we are introducing a new handwriting scheme as an integral part of our English curriculum. The scheme is called Kinetic Letters and has a multi-sensory approach that develops physical strength and pencil hold so that children are able to comfortably write and develop legible handwriting.

Handwriting is a physical activity that involves movement and recognition skills that need to be learnt and become part of the automatic cognitive skill set of the pupil.  To achieve this, the school has chosen the Kinetic Letters handwriting programme.

The programme has four threads.

• Making bodies stronger
• Holding the pencil (for speed, comfort and legibility)
• Learning the letters
• Flow and fluency

The key principles of the programme are:

• Building physical strength underpins handwriting and concentration. This knowledge informs the working positions that children use for writing and the strengthening targets they work on.
• The different components of writing are mastered individually before being used in combination.
• Letters are learnt as movements, not as visual shapes, and movement remains central to developing automaticity in letter formation, flow and fluency.
• Posture is important in developing the correct position for handwriting and so children are taught how to organise their working position and paper position to enable comfortable and fluent writing from the start.
• Correct pencil hold is taught from the start (ie as soon as a tri-pod grip is developmentally appropriate).

We are looking forward to seeing the results for our pupils and know that the approach will help to develop children that are able to write comfortably and at ease.

• National Curriculum - English
• Whole Class Text Plan - 2023-2024
• Vipers KS1
• Vipers KS2

Implementation 

At Leigh, we build unit of work around quality texts which are rich examples of the genre of text type being studied and contain high level vocabulary and language structures for the children to learn from. We teaching reading, writing and spoken language to meet the National Curriculum requirements inspired by these texts and integrate opportunities to develop vocabulary, oracy work and to gather information. We integrate the teaching of fiction genres, non-fiction text types as well as poetry in various units across the year. 

Our teaching team model high quality writing as well as conduct shared and guided writing opportunities to support all students make secure progress. Importantly, children are given opportunities to conduct independent writing to apply their learning and share their ideas and creativity.

For reading we utilise Vipers to progressively teach explicit reading skills across the year and give children opportunities to listen and respond to the class text daily in line with their curriculum. In years 3 to 6, our pupils engage with whole class reading three times a week in order to support their understanding of different text types and develop their journey as a reader.  All pupils are introduced to high quality texts as part of whole class reading and the books are carefully chosen to ensure that children are offered a full range of reading material.  In addition, each classes enjoys a class novel or story that is read to them by their class teacher.

Children at Leigh love reading; they love talking about books; they love discovering new characters and worlds; and they love finding out new information. Through their participation in our engaging, creative and vocabulary-rich reading and writing curriculum, underpinned by high quality texts from inspiring authors, our children are becoming confident readers and writers who love reading for the pure pleasure.

The outcomes of our reading curriculum ensure children are well-prepared to succeed in the next stages of their education and as adults in the workforce of the future.

We regularly review and monitor the impact of our curriculum through Pupil Voice, learning walks and book scrutiny as well as data collection from our formative and summative assessments.

 EYFS

At Leigh Primary School, we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school. Children are taught daily phonics sessions and intervention is provided daily to support children to 'keep up'. In addition, children read 3 times a week or more in reading practice groups or 1:1 to allow them to apply taught skills of fluency, prosody and comprehension.

Our Pupils in Early Years love books. They explore them across their continuous provision whether it be in the outside classroom; in their book corners with puppets and their theatre; in their role play corner or in their creative area.  Books permeate their daily school life and they love taking home their decodable reading practice book to ensure success but also their wealth of inspiring sharing books on a range of non-fiction topics as well as wonderful fiction texts.

• EYFS English Progression

The Early Learning Goals for English in the Early Year Framework are:

ELG: Listening, Attention and Understanding

✓ Listen attentively and respond to what they hear with relevant questions, comments and actions when being read to and during whole class discussions and small group interactions;

✓ Make comments about what they have heard and ask questions to clarify their understanding;

✓ Hold conversation when engaged in back-and-forth exchanges with their teacher and peers.

ELG: Speaking

✓ Participate in small group, class and one-to-one discussions, offering their own ideas, using recently introduced vocabulary;

✓ Offer explanations for why things might happen, making use of recently introduced vocabulary from stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems when appropriate;

✓ Express their ideas and feelings about their experiences using full sentences, including use of past, present and future tenses and making use of conjunctions, with modelling and support from their teacher.

ELG: Comprehension

✓ Demonstrate understanding of what has been read to them by retelling stories and narratives using their own words and recently introduced vocabulary;

✓ Anticipate – where appropriate – key events in stories;

✓ Use and understand recently introduced vocabulary during discussions about stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems and during role-play.

ELG: Word Reading

✓ Say a sound for each letter in the alphabet and at least 10 digraphs;

✓ Read words consistent with their phonic knowledge by sound-blending;

✓ Read aloud simple sentences and books that are consistent with their phonic knowledge, including some common exception words.

For further information on Reading and writing in the foundation stage please visit the EYFS curriculum tab and Early Reading and Phonics.