Intent

At St Lawrence CE Primary School, we are passionate to develop children’s achievement and engagement in all aspects of English.  We are determined that all our children, no matter their circumstances or starting point have the opportunities to learn and make progress in order to achieve their full potential. As a team, we have thought hard about the design of our English curriculum to ensure it is inclusive, engaging, challenging and progressive. The cornerstone of this is building every child’s speaking and listening skills through our use of drama, poetry, and discussion, which is not only evident in our English lessons but also across many of our curriculum subjects.  This ensures children are able to access a range of opportunities in order to become careful thoughtful listeners and eloquent confident speakers.  We place great important on building a love of reading within our children.  This is achieved through sharing stories and texts that we believe will ignite this passion within them.  Our Book Talk session allow the children to experience a range of great literature both fiction and non-fiction, while building their fundamental reading skills of decoding, fluency, accuracy and prosody.  Through developing speaking, listening and reading techniques, we aim to build a solid foundation for the children’s written skills.  We provide opportunities for all children across the school to write for a range of purposes and to a range of audiences.  This offers them the chance to engage authentically with the writing process and express their ideas clearly, creatively and coherently. By placing equal importance on all the elements of the English curriculum, children are able to develop and enhance their learning and understanding.

Implementation

Reading, writing and spelling is taught daily across St Lawrence.  Each element of the National Curriculum has been broken down into a small step document for each year group to ensure that teachers have clarity and understanding on what they need to teach and what their children need to achieve.  This also helps guide teacher’s assessment of each pupil.

Reading

In Key Stage 1, reading is taught via our Little Wandle Phonics scheme (please read Phonics guidance for further information).   From Summer term in Year 2, children also take part in Book Talk sessions where texts are shared and discussed.  Pupils also begin to record their responses more formally during these sessions in preparation for Key Stage 2.

In Key Stage 2 reading is taught as Book Talk sessions which vary according to the needs to the children and the text being studied.  The usual model of these sessions follows a cycle of exploring background information of the text, author, genre and exploring some of the language that may be encountered.  This is followed by a session where the text is read which can encompass the teacher modelling reading, choral reading, reading in pairs and individual reading.  The next session is a discussion lesson where key points and themes are explored as well as a discussion of a big question the teacher has posed.  Finally, the children have the opportunity to record their ideas from the text and big question. 

In addition to reading sessions, a class reader is shared with the children daily as well as regular visits across the week to our school library and whole class visits termly to Alton Town library.

In order to boost children’s progress, we have a team of skilled reading volunteers that hear specific children regularly across the week and afternoon intervention sessions run by our TAs following guidance from each class teacher.

Writing

We believe that the key to successful writing is engagement and enthusiasm therefore we ensure that each writing unit has a stimulus that will capture the children’s imagination, leading to an outpouring of ideas that the children are keen to record.  Through each unit the children encounter opportunities to engage in and explore their stimulus before investigating key features of their genre including discrete teaching of focused SPAG points that will be beneficial to them in their writing.  Our children have the opportunity to talk, share and draft their ideas before they produce their end of unit outcome.  Across the school, all pupils are encouraged to edit their work before sharing it with their target audience.

Speaking and Listening

We provide opportunities for all our children to focus on developing their speaking and listening skills.  These can be seen in our Book talk reading and discussions, drama lessons, debate activities, half termly poetry slams and regular public speaking occasions such as church services and Year 5 production.

Spelling

Little Wandle is used in Key Stage 1 to develop pupil’s spelling understanding.  In Key Stage 2, we are in the process of rolling out a Key Stage 2 phonics program in line with Little Wandle and National Curriculum guidance.  In addition to this, Years 3 to 6 also have a daily Word of the Day session where the key spellings for their year group are explored and learnt.

Handwriting

In Key Stage 1, all children take part in regular discrete handwriting lessons to help develop their fine motor skills and letter formation.  In Key Stage 2 handwriting is taught according to class and pupil need.  Intervention sessions are also used to support any children who may benefit from extra practice and guidance.

Impact

Teachers use a balance of formative and summative assessment opportunities in order to assess impact of learning on their children. The key to impact is the feedback on their learning each child receives, to this end teachers spend time giving children verbal feedback during each lesson in order for the children to question, understand and act upon the advice given.  Teachers also use feedback books to record key teaching and learning points of reading and writing lessons as well as keeping scores of spelling quizzes, comprehension scores and notes on children’s reading ability.  In addition to this feedback, there following tools are also used to gauge learning and progress.

Reading

Teachers follow Little Wandle procedures to track progress in reading.  Each term Key Stage 2 pupils (and Year 2 from Spring Term) undertake a fluency assessment task. Children in Key Stage 1 and 2 also use PIRA each term to track their progress in comprehension skills.  Key Stage 2 pupils also have half termly Rising Stars assessments in order to identify areas of strength and development.

Writing

In order to moderate teacher’s judgements, each year children take part in a No More Marking writing assignment which provides a writing age and level for each child which can be tracked over their time at St Lawrence.  Teachers also use staff meetings to internally moderate children’s writing as well as an annual moderating session with local schools.  SPAG is assessed formally using half termly RISING STARS tests.

Speaking and listening

Pupils in Key Stage 2 have a termly Listening Skills quiz

Spelling

Teachers follow Little Wandle procedures to track progress in phonics. In Key Stage 2, weekly scores for word of the day quizzes and phonics assessments are recorded.

Handwriting

Handwriting is internally moderated and linked to our school handwriting pen policy.

All of these tools and procedures allow us to carefully follow the progress of each child to ensure there are reaching their full potential and spotting any areas in which we can provide additional support.  In doing this, we hope to ensure all our children get the best possible education in order to be happy and successful in their future.

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