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English
BackVisions and Aims
At Oxclose Primary Academy we believe English is a fundamental life skill; it develops children’s ability to communicate effectively – to listen, speak, read and write for a range of purposes, with confidence and enjoyment. Our aim is to give our pupils the best start in life and equip them with a range of skills to support them in the future.
At Oxclose Primary Academy, our children enjoy a language-rich journey through our school, following a ‘book based’ approach using high-quality books as the core text to stimulate ideas and topics for writing. The aim is for our children to explore the texts in a sustained way and engage with the materials in depth; thereby, providing content for their own writing. Skills and knowledge in writing are carefully sequenced in order to give our pupils a platform to become 'extraordinary'. Our pupils write in a range of styles for multiple audiences and purposes, drawing on what they have read for inspiration. Alongside high-quality texts, we follow a structured poetry journey through school, starting in Reception through to Year 6. Children are exposed to a range of poetry forms where they’re encouraged and supported to analyse, discuss and compare key themes. Through our ‘reading into writing’ approach, we have ensured that all of our children are exposed to a range of stories, authors, styles and cultures.
By the end of Year Six, we intend for our pupils to have developed a love and appreciation for both writing and reading. Children of all ages are encouraged to read at home, with a book matched to either their phonics stage or their current reading age.
Reception Rationale Text Choice
Strong Foundations
The teaching of early reading begins as soon as our children start Reception where they begin to learn grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending.
At Oxclose Primary Academy, we recognise the importance of all children making a strong start in learning to read. We have adopted the Essential Letters and Sounds systematic phonics programme. This is a rigorous programme which ensures children in Reception and Key Stage 1 quickly gain the phonics knowledge and early reading skills that they need.
Pupils work within mixed ability groups led by the class teacher or highly skilled teaching assistant. Children are assessed every half term to identify bespoke 1-1 and small group support through our carefully planned intervention programme. Through careful assessment and tracking, our pupils are supported to make good progress and achieve their potential.
Sequencing Rationale
Writing is planned in a sequenced, systematic way to ensure full coverage of the curriculum, following a ‘book based’ approach. Every year group write for a range of genres and purposes, through a carefully planned build up of lessons. In Reception and Year 1, we have a strong focus on sentence mastery, particularly throughout autumn term to ensure our pupils are given time and lots of opportunities to embed strong foundations for writing.
Reception Writing Long Term Plan
Oracy at Oxclose
Here at Oxclose, we are keen to develop a purposeful and robust oracy curriculum offering to our pupils. We recognise the importance of speaking and listening skills, developed in Reception, and we encourage and support our pupils to build on those early skills as they move through school.
Reading
At Oxclose Primary Academy we value reading in all subjects and believe our pupils should be given opportunities to develop their reading skills through a wide range of high quality texts and genres.
Throughout their time in our school we want pupils to develop a love for reading alongside an opportunity to develop skills such as inference, prediction and retrieval. We feel that it is extremely important for our pupils to learn in a vocabulary rich environment and we aim to embed this in our Reception class, continuing through Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2.
Reading for Pleasure
At Oxclose Primary Academy, we believe all children should be given opportunities to enjoy reading and this starts with our youngest children in Reception. As soon as our pupils start school, they are exposed to lots of engaging, exciting books and stories. Each class takes part in a daily ‘Share a Story’ session where a new book is chosen either following the children’s interests, linked to current issues or following on from learning in the classroom. This has quickly become one of our favourite times of the day, where we can all stop what we’re doing and immerse ourselves in a great book!
Reading Books
At Oxclose Primary Academy, we have an extensive range of reading books and ‘free readers’. Each child receives a new book every week and we encourage our pupils to read the same book a number of times to build their fluency, comprehension and inference skills.
Our Key Stage 2 pupils have a bookmark which is signed each time they read, and our Key Stage 1 pupils have a home diary which is signed when they read at home.
We have some fantastic reading leaders from our Year 5 and Year 6 classes who read with our Key Stage 1 pupils and set up outdoor reading opportunities in our outdoor area. Our pupils really enjoy time together to read and it’s fantastic to see them supporting one another.
Support for reading at home
We are keen to involve and support parents and carers as their children begin learning phonics through drop-in coffee mornings and information meetings. Please click on the links below for support with ‘pure sounds’ for phase 2, 3 and 5 of Essential Letters and Sounds.
Phase 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBFnAcXHOUQ
Writing Intent, Implementation and Impact
Intent
We value the content and presentation of writing in all subjects at Oxclose and believe our pupils should be given opportunities to develop, edit and improve. We provide our pupils with a wide range of genres such as poetry, narrative, persuasive texts and reports to encourage children to develop their own natural style of writing.
It is our intention when teaching the English curriculum that our pupils acquire the necessary knowledge, skills and understanding to become lifelong learners. It is our intention that pupils learn to understand the relationships between words, word meaning, implied meaning and figurative language within writing lessons, whilst ensuring that they are supported in their spelling strategies. We intend that pupils are taught to control their speaking and writing consciously and to use correct Standard English through a vocabulary rich learning environment.
Implementation
Writing is part of our English curriculum and is one of the core subjects taught in school. Each year group has a Long Term Plan which follows the outcomes of the National Curriculum.
Our writing lessons are planned around a sequence of high quality age-appropriate texts and video clips. We use each book and clip to create opportunities to develop reading fluency and comprehension with a focus on key reading strategies and skills; develop grammar and punctuation knowledge and understanding to use and apply across the wider curriculum; explore the writing structure and features of different genres, identify the purpose and audience; plan and write an initial piece of writing with a clear context and purpose before evaluating the effectiveness of writing by editing and redrafting.
Early writing begins in our Reception class where children are provided with multiple opportunities to write through continuous provision and are lead in letter formation during daily phonics sessions with Essential Letters and Sounds.
Writing continues to develop in Key Stage 1 where children are exposed to a variety of genres and texts. Each year group has their own high quality key texts to use as a focus for writing with grammar lessons taught in context, weekly linking to the text or video clip.
At Oxclose, we believe that writing is strengthened by instilling a love for reading within our pupils. We value the importance of reading to supplement writing, providing a purpose and a context to writing. We believe that pupils who are provided a reason for writing demonstrate flair and effective writing composition, leading to high quality outcomes. Our school follows the Berol handwriting scheme, which teaches early letter joins and cursive letter formative from Year 2 to Year 6.
Impact
Pupils will learn through the book-led approach and develop to produce written work in all areas of the curriculum of a similar standard which evidence good progress from their last point of statutory assessment point or their starting point in Reception.
Pupils will be able to transfer skills with ease and show a good knowledge and understanding of spelling strategies. To assess and monitor progress across school, the senior leadership team will complete learning walks, carry out scutinies of work and planning across the year to ensure appropriate progress.
Reading Intent, Implementation and Impact
Intent
At Oxclose Primary Academy we value reading in all subjects and believe our pupils should be given opportunities to develop their reading skills through a wide range of high quality texts and genres. Throughout their time in our school we want pupils to develop a love for reading alongside an opportunity to develop skills such as inference, prediction and retrieval. We feel that it is extremely important for our pupils to learn in a vocabulary rich environment and we aim to embed this in our Reception class, continuing through Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2.
It is our aim to equip all of our children with the skills they need to be able to read a variety of texts, which will in turn enable them to access wider opportunities in life.
Implementation
Reading is part of our English curriculum and is one of the core subjects in school. Our Long Term Plan follows the National Curriculum and incorporates all aspects of reading, including fluency and confidence.
Reading starts as soon as our children join us in EYFS where they have daily phonics sessions, are read with individually throughout the week and have a wide range of opportunities to read during continuous provision.
In Year 1, our children have daily reading sessions where they either read to an adult or complete focussed phonics activities in small groups. In Year 2, Year 3 and Year 4, we have daily reading sessions where a small group of children read with an adult following a reciprocal reading approach, while the remainder of the class either read independently or complete focussed phonics tasks. In Year 5 and Year 6 our children take part in whole class reciprocal reading sessions daily under the guidance of their class teacher.
As well as our daily reading sessions, children are encouraged to read for enjoyment in our class book nooks and our school library throughout the week. Every year group has a class novel to be shared each term, these texts can be used to enhance teaching in English and/or History but are also used for the enjoyment of sharing a text as a class.
Reading comprehension skills are taught fortnightly in English lessons in Year 2 to Year 6 where children are encouraged to answer questions from a key text; a range of question stems are used to support children’s understanding of language and what the question is asking them to do.
Assessment notes are recorded in the class Reading File which is then used to make a judgement on each child’s reading ability linking directing to our Long Term Plans and the National Curriculum. Pupils from Year 2 to Year 6 will complete assessment tasks at the end of each term to inform further teaching and learning.
Impact
Pupils will be able to read confidently and fluently in all lessons, demonstrating an understanding of what they have read. Pupils in Key Stage 1 will be able to use their phonic knowledge to segment, blend and decode unfamiliar words to aid their reading progress. Pupils will be able to transfer skills learned in reading sessions to all aspects of their learning and access a wide range of opportunities.
To assess and monitor progress across school, SLT will complete learning walks, carry out pupil voice activities and monitor data across year groups.
