English
English at Longshaw
Intent:
At Longshaw Infant School we aim to deliver a quality English curriculum that develops children’s love of reading and writing. We strive to create an appreciation of books and a habit of reading widely and often. We recognise the importance of nurturing a culture where children take pride in their writing, can write clearly and accurately and for a range of purposes. We want to inspire children to be confident in the art of speaking and listening and use discussion to communicate and further their learning.
These skills will be taught progressively in order to give children a solid foundation for future learning, therefore enabling them to succeed in today’s society.
Implementation:
Our KS1 English curriculum overview
Phonics
Our School has chosen to use a systematic, synthetic phonics planning programme developed by Lancashire County Council titled Lancashire Red Rose Letters and Sounds. It provides a rigorous and thorough planning programme in order to strengthen the teaching and learning of phonics, and ensure children become enthusiastic and successful readers and writers.
Please click below to view the programme overview and progression
Reading
Reading stimulates your imagination and expands your understanding of the world. It is a necessary life skill and teaching children to read helps develop their language skills and thought processes. Children learn new vocabulary as they read. Subconsciously, they absorb information on how to structure sentences and how to use words and other language features effectively in their writing and speaking and this develops their confidence. Reading also improves concentration levels. Most importantly of all reading is fun!
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Reading is a key priority across school. Children take part in reading practise sessions at least three times a week, daily story time and where necessary one-to-one reading. We aim to develop a love of reading with every child, with the hope that they each become lifelong readers.
We use Reading books from a variety of publishers, ensuring they are fully decodable and matching them closely to the phonemes and tricky words children are learning within their Phonics lessons. Once a child is a fluent reader, they will progress on to non-decodable books.
At Longshaw, all our classrooms host an inviting and welcoming reading area filled with age appropriate, ‘reading for pleasure’ books. Pupils are encouraged to use this area to choose, read and interact with books in an enjoyable way. All children in school have access to the school library each week and have the opportunity to take home a library book to share with someone at home.
We use a variety of books across many areas of the curriculum and story time is part of each class timetable daily.
Please click below to view our progression document
Writing
The development of writing skills is based in the development of oracy skills – if you can’t say it, you can’t write it!
It is a core skill which requires imagination, use of language and understanding of sentence structures, along with stamina and dexterity to come together. In order for children to learn writing skills progressively each of these elements must be taught clearly and consistently. Children can then confidently use these skills to publish and communicate their own ideas effectively and for a range of purposes.
Our School has developed their own progression document to support the teaching of high quality, engaging and progressive Writing lessons. Units of work are delivered and structured around high quality texts and children are given many varied opportunities for writing. Skills are built up slowly through repetition and children are exposed to adventurous vocabulary, supporting all our other work at school to ensure our children have a rich and varied vocabulary.
We use elements of Talk 4 Writing to support our narrative units, as we believe, if a child can’t say it, they can’t write it! Our children thoroughly enjoy retelling stories and building up an internal bank of stories to use in the future.
Please click below to see our Writing Progression
Speaking & Listening
Speaking and listening is incorporated into all areas of the curriculum. Teachers provide children with a range of purposeful opportunities through play, drama and discussion (e.g. hot seating, freeze frames, puppets, debates) to apply their speaking and listening skills. Adults act as good role models within the classroom using complete sentences and Standard English.
Oracy
Oracy has always been at the forefront of our school improvement plan. We know language development is an area of key importance to our children here at Longshaw Infant School. We use this as our driving force to improve pupil's spoken language and vocabulary which has a positive impact on all wider subjects, and as such, a fundamental key to achieve success!
A huge T H A N K Y O U to those parents/carers who attended school to listen to Mrs Sopel and Mrs Hill discuss Early Reading at Longshaw.
Below is the power point used during the workshop if you were unable to attend.
As always, if you have any concerns with your child and their Reading progress, please speak initially to your child's class teacher.