Egerton Primary School
English
People think that stories are shaped by people.
In fact, it's the other way around.
Terry Pratchett
Overview
The English National Curriculum consists of the following 4 main areas:
Spoken Language: Speaking and listening
Reading: Word reading and comprehension
Writing: Transcription (the mechanics of writing) and composition (the art of writing)
Vocabulary, punctuation and grammar
The teaching of English underpins all development and learning for children. As such, these areas are taught within discrete daily English lessons as well as across a range of curriculum subjects through topic based teaching.
Our school is a hub of reading and the enjoyment of literature. Following our bespoke Reading Pathway, all pupils leave Egerton having had 36 diverse, high-quality texts read to them - rich with cultural capital. Alongside this, special events, competitions, inter-clas reading, poetry day, reading week, visits, virtual author talks and more are used throughout the year to promote a love for reading and writing.
Early Reading: Little Wandle
At Egerton, 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 Nursery/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.
As a result, all our children are able to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. At Egerton, we also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. We have a strong focus on language development for our children because we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects.
Spelling Shed
Building on the strong foundation of Little Wandle phonics in Reception and Year 1, the Spelling Shed scheme is followed from Years 2 to 6. This scheme is continuously updated to include the most up-to-date approaches to spelling and vocabulary. Phonics has been used as a base which is then built upon with proven approaches, such as explicitly teaching morphology, etymology and orthographic mapping, as well as identifying and using spelling patterns. Alongside this, weekly homework on the online game is set to support each week's pattern, as well as whole school competitions to engage pupils.
Big Cat: Year 2 - 6
Upon reaching Year 2, children are then assessed using the Big Cat reading band assessments. These build directly from our Little Wandle reading scheme from the same publsiher. The children move through the levelled bands to ensure they recieve a targetted and high-quality range of texts to choose from their library. Each band offers a careful level of extended challenge. Of course, we expect all children to pursue their own reading for pleasure! As such, reading journals are monitored in class which a child updates with their book band progress and reading for pleasure.
In Key Stage 2 daily whole class reading sessions are carried out which involves the children taking part in discussions, answering comprehension questions and reading aloud. These are based on the well-established VIPERS reading skills: Vocab, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval and Summary. These can be adult supported or independent activities.
Writing Units
To develop the children’s stamina and skills to write at length and use accurate spelling, punctuation and grammar, they are exposed to a variety of genres and text types. These support the act of transcription (the mechanics of writing) and composition (the art of writing). Writing tasks have a clear audience and purpose in which children are challenged to adapt their use of language and style of writing to create high quality, original and imaginative pieces.
This teaching of English at Egerton aims to provide children with a clear understanding of the spoken and written word as well as develop a life-long enjoyment of reading. The skills of speaking and listening are broken down into individual steps from years 1 - 6, then used by teachers to inform all their planning.