English
Speaking and Listening
Talking is fundamental to learning. Children are encouraged to work with partners and in small groups to stimulate discussion, debate, recount experiences, test out ideas and build confidence before sharing ideas with the whole class. Children are encouraged and helped to talk clearly and confidently and with expression in order to communicate ideas and feelings. Similarly and just as importantly, is the need to listen to others and respond appropriately - this is also taught explicitly. All children are provided with opportunities in all areas of the curriculum to develop skills in both speaking and listening.
Reading
At St Philip’s we aim to foster a life-long love of reading. Our aim is not only to teach children the skills to read with confidence, fluency and understanding, but also to foster a genuine desire to read for pleasure and purpose. Children spend time throughout the week developing their reading through a range of individual, group and whole class reading sessions. The focus develops from being able to decode words to understanding their meaning. Then to understanding how a text is structured to reading between the lines. Finally they think about how all of this has an impact on the reader. We ensure that children read many different styles of literature, including fiction, non-fiction and poetry whilst developing the full range of skills needed to learn to decode and understand text. There a range of texts available to the children in their class reading corners and the school library.
We believe children learn to read best when school and home work together in partnership and written communication is directed through a reading record. These will vary depending on the age and stage of the children. Early readers follow a structured programme of carefully selected books which adhere to our Little Wandle phonics scheme and are organised into the phonics phases which they are taught. Children may choose books from our well-stocked school library. All children enjoy a weekly visit to the library and are empowered to exercise freedoms of choice and independence when choosing from our vast range of reading material. All children will take home two reading books, a reading book aimed to support their level of understanding and comprehension and a reading for pleasure book to enjoy. Please click on the link below to see our Reading for Pleasure statement. As children move from Little Wandle they enjoy a range of reading for pleasure books from the school library which they can take home to read as their reading book.
Reading for Pleasure statement
Writing
Writing is a crucial part of our curriculum at St Philip’s and all children from Foundation Stage to Year 6 are provided with many opportunities to develop and apply their writing skills not only in English lessons, but across the wider curriculum.
Using high-quality texts as stimulus, children are taught to plan, revise and evaluate their writing whilst developing effective transcription and effective composition skills. Children also develop an awareness of the audience, purpose and context, and an increasingly wide knowledge of vocabulary and grammar.
Planning for English follows the three phase model of reading, capturing ideas and writing. Each unit is planned with a set outcome; ensuring learners are writing for a clear purpose and applying what has been taught in a meaningful way. These units last between one and three weeks, depending on the genre being studied.
Children are provided opportunities to write at length in other curriculum areas and it is expected that their work in these areas reflects the same standards as work completed within English lessons.
High standards of presentation are valued and children are taught to join their writing, developing precision, fluency and speed. Consistent high levels of presentation are rewarded during weekly Celebration Collective Worships.
Link to National Curriculum page for English:
Phonics
At St Philip’s we use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised systematic synthetics phonics programme. We use the programme across the whole of school to support those children who are in the early and beginning stages of reading, until they become a fluent and confident reader.
Little Wandle allows us to teach our children to read in whole class, small group and 1-1 situations. Reading books are closely matched to each child’s phonics stage, to allow them to read and enjoy books at the correct level for them.
How is reading taught?
Children across Reception and Year 1 have a daily phonics lesson. Phonics lessons allow the children to learn new GPCs, review any previously taught GPCs, learn new tricky words and review any old tricky words. The lessons finish with a writing focus, which allows them to apply their skills to spelling different words. When children move into Year 2, they gradually turn their focus onto spelling words. Sessions last up to 25 minutes and vary in content depending on each year group.
Alongside phonics lessons, all children across Reception and KS1 have three weekly reading practice sessions. This allows the children to focus on their skills of decoding, prosody and comprehension. Sessions last up to 25 minutes, with the children reading books which are closely matched to their reading level. Children take home a reading book each week which is closely matched to their phonics level. They practice it over the week and share it with their family before swapping it for another.
Writing
Children learn to form their letters as part of the early phonics sessions. To ensure consistency, ‘formation phrases’ are used to support children with their letter formation. They learn phrases linked to different Little Wandle pictures to help them with their writing.
Assessments
Children are assessed at least once at the end of every half term. These assessments are used to track their progress and to plan any necessary interventions.
Life beyond KS1
If a child leaves KS1 not able to read all of the phonics sounds covered in Little Wandle, we run an intervention programme to support them in their reading. They will stay on this intervention until they are reading confidently and fluently. This intervention is called Rapid Catch-up and is for any child from January of Year 2 onwards.
Reading Interventions
If a child is not on-track during a phonics lesson they will be given extra phonics support. This is done in the form of different interventions.
Keep-up
Children in Reception and Year 1, who are not on-track, will take part in daily phonics Keep-up sessions. These are targeted using regular assessments to meet the needs of a child. They can focus on GPCs or blending to read.
Rapid Catch-up
Any child from spring term Year 2 who is not on track will take part in daily Rapid Catch-up sessions. These focus on any GPCs which children need and then applying these to reading books. These Catch-up sessions can run all the way up to Year 6. The sessions are well planned and can vary depending on the needs of the children.
SEND
For those children with more significant learning needs, they follow the Little Wandle SEND programme. Systematic synthetic phonics supports all children in their reading development whatever their need, but the pace and teaching technique maybe adapted where necessary.
What does it mean?
Phoneme
The smallest unit of sound that can be identified in words. We sometimes simply call this a ‘sound’.
Grapheme
A letter or group of letters used to represent a particular phoneme when writing. The way graphemes are used to represent phonemes in our written language is known as the ‘alphabetic code’.
GPC
This stands for grapheme–phoneme correspondence, the sound–letter relationship between each element of the alphabetic code.
Digraph
A grapheme using two letters to represent one phoneme. With children, we frequently reinforce it with the mantra ‘two letters, one sound’.
Trigraph
A grapheme using three letters to represent one phoneme. With children, we frequently reinforce it with the mantra ‘three letters, one sound’.
Tricky words
High-frequency words that, although decodable in themselves, cannot be decoded by children using the GPCs they have been taught up to that point. Not all high-frequency words are ‘tricky words’. Many tricky words cease to be tricky in the later stages of our programme, as more GPCs are learned.
Split vowel digraph
A digraph representing a vowel sound where its two letters are split by an intervening consonant (for example, ‘a_e’ in ‘take’).
Prosody
The rhythmic and intonational aspect of speech that manifests as expressive reading. It comprises timing, phrasing and intonation, and helps to convey meaning and add ‘life’ to reading.
Overt blending aloud or Sound talking
Sound-talking aloud every phoneme in turn before blending them together to form the word.
Chunk it up
To break up a longer word and read it one part (chunk) at a time, to avoid being overwhelmed and to ease the process of blending.
Blend
To combine individual phonemes into a whole word, working all the way through from left to right.
Formation phrase
A memorable phrase used to support the children in forming the letter correctly using directional vocabulary, such as ‘down’, ‘up’, ‘across’ and ‘over’.
Resources for parents
The link below takes you to the Little Wandle for parents web page where you can access a variety of resources including how to pronounce different sounds.
For parents | Letters and Sounds (littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk)
