ENGLISH AT GRAYSWOOD

At Grayswood Primary, the acquisition of core literacy skills is central to teaching and learning. We believe that every child should not only be literate, but have a love of language – whether that is through reading, writing or speaking a modern foreign language. Regular guided reading and writing sessions are used to ensure that all children are challenged and supported as they take the next important steps in their learning. We teach a cursive script from Year 1 which ensures children have a neat and fluent style of handwriting.

We place the learning of the key skills of English and at the heart of our teaching, but we also believe in delivering this through a creative and innovative curriculum which incorporates role play, drama, talk for writing and speaking and listening techniques.

We firmly believe that this approach enables children to leave our school with the necessary literacy skills to allow them to access and assimilate new information as they continue on their learning journeys.

How is English taught across Key Stages?

EYFS

1. the Early Years Foundation Stage there is a great emphasis on speaking and listening as well as phonics. Continuous provision allows for children to develop language through small world play, sensory play and role play. Children have daily formal Phonics sessions using the schemes Jolly Phonics and Letters and Sounds. addition to this, children have regular adult led sessions, where they are taught how to apply their phonic skills to their writing. Work is planned around the children’s interests and the topics they have chosen, so that children are inspired to write about things that are relevant to them. Interesting and exciting texts are chosen, which foster a love of reading, speaking and writing. Adults also “dip in” to the children’s own child-initiated learning, where they encourage children to read and write for a purpose, led by their own play.

Key Stage 1

Children are taught the skills in order to become confident readers and to write for a range of different purposes and audiences. In Key Stage 1 all pupils have daily phonics sessions following the Letters and Sounds programme. Each day they undertake a Guided Reading session during which they will read as part of a group or individually to an adult. At Grayswood, books are levelled/colour-banded in accordance with the PM Benchmarking Reading scheme, which children follow until they become a 'Free Reader'. They also have a daily English lesson; this involves speaking, listening, reading and writing which usually lasts for 45 minutes to 1 hour. We always start with a book and plan our lessons continually around the texts. Building opportunities to plan, draft, edit and publish in line with the curriculum.

Lower Key Stage 2

Lower Key Stage 2 classes also have dedicated English lessons that involve text, word and sentence level work based around a key text. Children learn about different genres of writing through these texts and teachers plan activities around them to suit the needs of different genres. They write regularly and receive feedback and targets to help them improve through systematic marking. They build on their skills and knowledge in SPAG in discrete lessons and continue to develop editing skills.

Upper Key Stage 2

Upper Key Stage 2 classes have dedicated English lessons and receive targeted support where they need in punctuation, grammar and spelling (SPAG). Similar to previous years, they work around a core text and teachers plan a variety of writing genres to meet the needs of the group. They build in the plan, draft, edit and publish rotation so that children develop the key skills needed for writing and become confident in a number of different text types.