English Vision
Our vision is to instil ‘a love for reading and writing’ across the whole school. We strive to ensure children leave Minworth Junior and Infant school as literate young adults, adequately equipped to continue with the next stage of their educational journey, regardless of their backgrounds, needs or abilities. In order to achieve this, children will be immersed in engaging, challenging texts throughout the curriculum, which aim to capture their imagination and inspire them to write creatively. We believe that every curriculum subject, has an added responsibility in supporting children's English ability.
Adhering to the structure of the National Curriculum, the teaching of English is broken down into four core areas across the school:
- Writing
- Reading (including the teaching of systematic phonics)
- Spelling, Vocabulary, Grammar , Punctuation and Glossary
- Spoken language.
Writing:
Our aim at Minworth is for all of our children, irrespective of background or ability, to become effective and enthusiastic writers; to be able to write with grammatical accuracy; with appropriate style and flair; with an awareness of the reader; and, to be able to write at length, within whichever genre they are provided or choose to express themselves - today, tomorrow and in the years ahead.
We use Jane Considine's, The Write Stuff, as a basis for our curriculum. The high quality modelling enables our children to succeed and become confident, independent writers. Over the course of a week, children are timetabled to be taught spelling or phonics daily. They have a discrete weekly lesson focusing on grammar and punctuation, and another in reading skills. Children then have sentence stacking lessons.
Grammar and Punctuation: Every Monday, children in Year 1 - 6 are taught a structured lesson that allow them to develop their use of grammatical terms, punctuation and application. These lessons are carefully planned so all National Curriculum objectives are covered, and children are able to consolidate and develop their knowledge and skill. The lessons reference the text children they are currently studying. The use of text extract support children in identifying the word classes, punctuation etc.
Spelling: Each week begins with a new spelling rule. This is shared with the children and is reinforced during the week. We provide adequate time for the children to practice new spelling rules and understand the meaning behind the words. Children are taught to explore language and enjoy 'playing around with vocabulary'. A low stake test is carried out in school to support children in correctly recalling the spelling rules. We do not ask children to practice for spelling tests at home, instead children practice a few words daily at the start of the lesson, as a part of their handwriting practice.
Sentence stacking lessons: Each week children have three recorded sentence stacking lessons. The sentence stacking approach teaches children that sentences are stacked together chronologically and organised to engage a reader. We combine grammatical techniques with imaginative vocabulary so children write short, inspiring paragraphs that they can immediately apply to their own writing.
The sentence stacking lessons build so children are prepared to write an independent piece in depth. The medium term plans detail this approach across the school.
Reading:
At Minworth, we fully recognise the importance of reading and the fundamental role it plays in learning. We take the opportunity to support reading across the curriculum and creating a love of reading. Teaching staff embrace all aspects of literature from the old to the new, the report to the comic, the novel to the webpage, all in a bid to immerse our children in texts that broaden their thinking and their horizons. Teaching strategies are employed that recognise children’s needs in each phase, so that children's reading development takes them from learning to read to reading to learn.
Reading Lessons are taught on a Tuesday for every year group (Y1-Y6). This approach allows the children to consolidate their previous learning, and enjoy more of their text before their sentence stacking lessons. The reading from 'real texts' is at the heart of our English curriculum. They are all age-appropriate texts, planned for the year group to ensure there is a balance of genre or purpose. The reading objectives are well planned to support children in developing as a reader. Medium Term Plan, for each year group, detail this.
In addition, children share a text with their class daily. The variety of texts and stories allow for children to experience a wide variety of authors, genres and styles, to support their literature love. These texts are detailed in the End of Day Read document.
Phonics:
Phonics is recommended as the first strategy that children should be taught, in helping them learn to read. It runs alongside other teaching methods, such as guided reading and shared reading, to help children develop all the other vital reading skills to hopefully give them a real love of reading. At Minworth Junior and Infant School we combine the guidance and phase progression from Little Wandle.
Reception
Children are assessed on their knowledge of initial sounds and whether a child can discriminate between different sounds, identify the initial and end sounds in words, blend sounds together and split words in to sounds. They are taught these skills continually throughout the year whilst being introduced to phase two, which is learning to hear a sound and knowing how to form it and recognise it in a systematic way by learning one set at a time.
Set 1 - s a t p, Set 2 - i n m d , Set 3 - g o c k, Set 4 - ck e u r, Set 5 - h b f ff l ll s ss
Once children are secure in these sounds they begin to learn the next set of sounds in phase three. Phase three is taught in the same way as phase two, and by the end of phase three the children will know one way of writing each of the 44 phonemes.
Set 6 - j v w x, Set 7 - y z zz qu, Consonant digraphs - ch sh th ng
Vowel digraphs (and trigraphs) ai ee igh oa oo ar or ur ow oi ear air ure er
Year 1
Children will consolidate the learning from reception and revisit any of the 44 phonemes that children may not be secure on before starting phase four. The main challenge in this phase is to help children to blend and segment words with adjacent consonants e.g. truck, help. As children develop in confidence they are introduced to phase five where children will learn alternative ways to write sounds and split digraphs. For example, they would already know ai as in rain, but now they will be introduced to ay as in day and a-e as in make. At the end of the year all children sit a national phonics screening test.
Year 2
Children will consolidate the learning from year one before moving on to developing greater fluency in reading and exploring spelling rules and conventions, e.g. adding -ing and -ed. Any children who did not meet the Government's expected standard in the year one phonics screening test will repeat it at the end of year two.
Key Stage Two
If children are assessed to require or need greater competency in phonics, they will continue to have support to learn the phonemes. Children who are secure up to phase six will learn the spelling strategies and common exception words for their age and year group.
To support the school’s approach to phonics, the school has adopted the Bug Club Reading scheme. The children start on picture books until they are able to recognise and self-blend sounds. As children’s phonetic knowledge develops, they are able to move through the reading bands which provides opportunities to decode more complex words, develop an on-sight vocabulary and read with greater fluency whilst being challenged to develop their comprehension skills. Once children’s reading is secure they will become a ‘free reader’, choosing their own texts. Comprehension and reading strategies continue throughout the key stage two curriculum.