English Skills Progression

Intent:

At Wadworth Primary School we believe that to inspire children to use the English language, in all of its aspects, with confidence, understanding and enjoyment we have to provide a rich and varied curriculum which gives opportunity for first-hand experiences to scaffold their possibilities to rehearse emerging progressive skills in a variety of daily contexts building across all curriculum subjects.  These encounters in our rich literacy heritage enables each child to build up their own resilience, confidence and reflective skills to identify their achievement which they can celebrate. To accomplish this all staff, provide high quality first teaching which breaks learning down into small progressive steps that are daily modelled and replicated frequently.  We consider that a secure knowledge in English language skills is crucial in providing a high quality education which will provide the tools to be a respectful participant in their future society.

Our core values provide a platform on which we have built our curriculum offer at Wadworth Primary School. Our English curriculum is underpinned by our core values in the following ways:

• Persevering
  • To develop the ability to stick with something, to continue working, to try harder and to not give up.
  • To know that it is fine to make mistakes, when participating in an English, and to understand that mistakes are part of the process to reaching a high-quality outcome.
• Problem solving
  • To do their best work and then to push themselves beyond what they consider to be their best.
  • To develop a desire to achieve something.
• Independence
  • To develop confident readers and writer who are not afraid to ‘have a go’.
  • To develop authors who have the confidence to think independently.
• Being attentive (listening)
  • Acquire skills through listening to others.
  • Having a good knowledge of story through listening with engagement.
• Communicating
  • Being able to talk about their learning and share their opinions on texts.
  • To articulate their ideas to support their recording.
• Collaborating
  • To work collaboratively to rehearse and perform.
  • To support others with a skill you are confident in already.

Beyond the Subject:

• Children need to be able to link their spoken language to be able to articulate their thoughts and feelings.
• Children to use English skills across the curriculum.
• Children to identify the importance of English to be able to access all learning.
• Children to enjoy of reading widely to enrich their lives.

Children making links about what they have read their own experiences.

Implementation:

Reading Implementation

Phonics and Early Reading
Learning to read is the most important thing your child will learn at our school. Everything else depends on it so we put as much energy as we possibly can into making sure that every single child learns to read as quickly as possible.

We want your child to love reading – and to want to read for themselves. This is why we put our efforts into making sure they develop a love of books as well as simply learning to read. 

At Wadworth we follow the Read Write Inc. scheme for learning to read using phonics. 

The children are taught to read by:
We start by teaching phonics to the children in the Reception class. This means that they learn how to ‘read’ the sounds in words and how those sounds can be written down. This is essential for reading, but it also helps children learn to spell well. We teach the children simple ways of remembering these sounds and letters using pictures and phrases to help them.  The children also practise reading (and spelling) what we call ‘tricky words’, such as ‘once,’ ‘have,’ ‘said’ and ‘where’.

Once children can blend sounds together to read words, they practise their reading with books that match the phonics and the ‘tricky words’ they know. They start thinking that they can read and this does wonders for their confidence.

Through daily reading for pleasure teachers develop children’s knowledge of stories, poetry and information books which enable children to develop their spoken vocabulary which then scaffolds their writing.

How we support parents at Wadworth:
We hold meetings for parents to come in and find out more about how we teach reading. These sessions are really useful for you to be able to help children learn at home.

At the beginning of Reception, children take different sorts of books home from school. One is the book that they have been working on in school and should be able to read with confidence. In addition to this they will also take home a reading book that is exactly matched to their phonics stage that they have not practised in school. In order to further promote reading for pleasure, children also have the opportunity to take home a ‘Snuggle Book’ to share with their family.

Reading in Key Stage 2

By the end of Year 2, children should be able to read aloud books that are at the right level for his or her age. In Year 3 and beyond, we concentrate more on helping children to understand what they are reading, although this work begins very early on. 

Whole class reading 

Children are taught how to understand what they read as a whole class using quality texts.  Where possible, these texts are linked to the topic that the class is studying.  

We follow a Vipers reading sequence for the planning and teaching of whole class reading. 

The Vipers are:

Writing

Wadworth pupils begin their writing journey in Reception where they begin the Read, Write Inc. Phonics programme.  This is a systematic programme of synthetic phonics that ensures that the children quickly learn the sounds that letters make as well as beginning to blend those sounds to read words and then explicitly teaches them how to use their phonics skills in writing.  

Children in Reception and Key Stage 1 write linked to their class topic.  Great importance is placed on children being able to orally retell stories. In order to help us to develop competent and enthusiastic writers who can express themselves across a range of contexts, in Key Stage 2 all of our teaching of writing is cross curricular and links to the class’s termly topic; this provides our children with regular opportunities to write for a range of purposes and audiences.  Writing and reading are closely linked and we ensure that children are reading daily, as well as being read to, in order to build on their knowledge of different genres of writing and develop their vocabulary.  Our writing teaching sequence has a clear research-informed structure which begins with providing the children with a model text to read, unpick and identify the purpose of and audience for the piece of writing.  Children then carry out a number of pre-writing activities focusing on the skills and features required for the genre of writing that they are working on; all grammar and punctuation skills are taught in the context of the writing that the children do.  Following this, they plan their writing using a variety of different graphic organisers and then write their first draft.  They receive feedback on this from the teacher and then edit and improve their writing before producing their polished piece that is shared with the audience.  Each of these stages is underpinned by high quality modelling by and shared writing with the teacher.

All children are set clear targets for their writing that they can see if the front of their books and children’s final pieces of writing are assessed and their targets updated if necessary.

Lower ability writers are often supported in class in smaller groups as well as receiving additional interventions that have clear, specific targets.

In Reception and Key Stage 1, children learn spellings during their daily Read, Write Inc. phonics sessions.  From Year 2 onward, spelling rules linked to NC are taught within a discrete weekly session and practised at intervals throughout the week. The rule and spellings are then revisited in a ‘retrieval’ session which may take the form as a class quiz or test.

The teaching of handwriting begins with correct letter formation using the Read, Write Inc. handwriting phrases in Reception.  From Year 1 to Year 6, Nelson Handwriting is used with the aim that by the time they leave us our children have developed their own style that is fluent, cursive, legible and neatly presented.

Impact:

Reading:

Phonics is taught very consistently across Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 and reading teachers are coached and supported to ensure that this is the case.  Grouping the children ensures that their needs are met and 1:1 tutoring means that they are supported to keep up with their group.  The rigor of the six-week assessment cycle guarantees that progress is very closely monitored and the termly support of an external Read, Write Inc. consultant trainer provides opportunities to make certain that the children are making the best possible progress.

Attainment in reading is measured using statutory assessments such as the end of EYFS, Key Stage 1 and 2 and following the outcomes in the Year 1 Phonics Screening check. Additionally, we track our own reading attainment through the use of RWI half termly and screening assessments, Cornerstones reading papers and past SATs paper plus ongoing teacher assessment. More importantly, we believe that reading is the key to unlock all learning and so the impact of our reading goes beyond the statutory assessments. We give all the children the opportunity to enter the amazing new worlds that a book opens up to them and share texts from a range of cultures or genres to inspire them to question or seek out more for themselves. We ensure that reading is prioritised to support a child’s journey at Wadworth. When they leave us, we want pupils to possess the reading skills and love of literature which will help them to enjoy and access any aspects of learning they encounter in the future.

Writing:

From the regular monitoring of plans, books and pupil interviews, it is clear that writing is taught in a systematic and progressive way, that prior teaching and learning is considered, and that learning is memorable. Children enjoy talking about their writing – about its construction, purpose and effect on the reader. They are confident to share their writing with staff, children and parents alike and parents are complimentary about the stamina and standard of writing throughout the school.

As a result of the explicit teaching of writing skills, cross-curricular writing is of the same standard as writing completed in literacy units. All writing is planned with a clear intention and audience and editing ensures that writing is published to the child’s best standard. Children achieve well at the end of both Key stages and leave Wadworth with a secure understanding of writing and are well prepared to meet the needs of a challenging secondary curriculum and the expectations of writing across all subjects. Teachers use the Alison Philipson writing progression statements alongside a range of the child’s writing to monitor progress and assess them at key points throughout the school year. This information is shared with children and parents three times per academic year. The English Lead monitors the teaching and learning of writing frequently to ensure that standards remain consistently high and to identify areas for ongoing CPD.