ENGLISH

We believe that learning is strengthened by instilling a love for reading within our pupils. Our pupils are encouraged to read daily at home through our weekly visits to our library bus, our daily class novel reading in class, the story jars and general discussion about books. 

WRITING

We value the importance of reading to supplement writing, providing a purpose and a context to writing. We know that pupils who are provided a reason for writing demonstrate flair and effective writing composition, leading to high quality outcomes. Every half term, the English curriculum is taught by studying a high quality text where writing opportunities are derived from this. Each week, the children are taught to develop an understanding of the texts through reading comprehension - exploring the key themes, events, and plot of the texts being studied. From this element of the curriculum, pupils are taught the grammar from the National Curriculum which is taught to correspond to the genres being written as part of the writing process. Children are then supported in how to apply the grammatical content taught in identifying features of a high quality modeled text, before progressing to plan, write and re-draft a written piece which is fit for purpose and audience.

Throughout this process children receive regular feedback from both teachers and their peers in the writing process; class teachers provide guidance and feedback during lesson times in order to ensure this has maximum impact on pupils' outcomes.

Based on our belief about spaced and distributed learning, genres are revisited and build up on throughout the primary phase and grammar elements are embedded through regular retrieval practices. We moderate our teaching assessment of writing regularly within and across other schools to ensure that our assessment is accurate.

LONG TERM PLANS ENGLISH WRITING 

ORACY

Oracy is the ability to articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage with others through spoken language. In school, oracy is a vital tool for learning; by teaching students to become more effective speakers and listeners we empower them to better understand themselves, each other and the world around them. 

At St Osmund's Catholic Primary School, we believe spoken language to be essential in the development and achievement of our children across the curriculum. We strive to develop spoken language skills through the taught curriculum, playtimes and lunchtimes, extra-curricular activities and the whole ethos of the school. Children are taught how to be effective communicators through their learning by developing skills such as storytelling, debating and presenting. Good oracy skills support wider literacy skills; improvement in oracy is also linked to improvements in reading, writing, and overall attainment. 

READING

PHONICS AND READING

Reading is complex and therefore our teaching and implementation of phonics teaching, guided reading and additional interventions are reviewed and evaluated on a regular basis to ensure that our phonics and reading program meets the need of our pupils.

Fluency

At St. Osmund’s Primary School we use our own programme for teaching of phonics which we have established over the last few years. This allows our phonics teaching and learning to be progressive throughout Reception to Year 2.  All children have discrete, daily phonics sessions in small groups where they revise previous learning, are taught new graphemes/phonemes, practise together and apply what they have learnt. This small group approach allows children to learn at their pace and build in daily, weekly and monthly retrieval practices to ensure that children are becoming fluent in reading by the end of year 1. Additional afternoon session are being taught to children who need extra time to learn some of the 44 phonemes, because as a school we believe this foundational knowledge is the base for future success. 

Through our programme  children are taught the 44 phonemes that make up all the sounds required for reading and spelling. These phonemes include those made by just one letter and those that are made by two or more. Children work through the different phases and as they grow in confidence and experience, they are introduced to alternative ways of representing the same sound.

Children who are struggling with fluency past the middle of year 2 are enrolled in a 1:1 reading intervention program to ensure that all our children will leave primary school as fluent readers.

How can parents help? 

Phonics Booklets will be send home when your child starts a new phase for your information and so that you can help your child to achieve through practicing on a regular basis at home. 

Comprehension

We believe that reading skills need to be taught explicitly through a well-tailored and constantly reviewed whole school approach. Guided reading takes place every day for a minimum of 30 minutes, incorporating age-appropriate, challenging texts which are rich in vocabulary.

There is a clear focus on core comprehensions skills. This strategy aims to develop depth in the pupils responses at every age. The clear structure of our guided Reading sessions reflects our understanding that reading is “active” and the clear planning structure supports staff in delivering high quality reading sessions and ensure children have time to practise skills and embed their knowledge on how to answer different questions in line with our belief of spaced out learning. 

Weekly Guided Reading structure

 SPELLING AND HANDWRITING

Whilst we ensure that there is a language rich English curriculum, we priorities and regard the mastering of foundational knowledge as crucial in the younger years. Therefore, we teach handwriting and spelling discretely as well as give pupils plenty of opportunities to practise their their skills. In line with teacher assessment our pupils will be working on progressively harder spellings throughout the different year groups. 

To aid the children's application of spellings when writing, we have recently introduced individual spelling books and a assessment systems which takes into account that children need to overlearn spellings to help them remember.