English
Introduction
At The Learning Academies Trust, we are highly motivated to ensure that the disadvantages children face in their life circumstances do not affect their education, dreams, and futures. We are acutely aware of the vital role that language development, reading and oracy skills have when it comes to accessing and enjoying education, as well as improving life chances, which is why we are dedicated to placing these life-skills at the heart of our curriculum.
Intent | What and why do we teach what we teach?
Our aim, in all our schools at The Learning Academies Trust, is to develop avid readers who can communicate their ideas effectively as articulate speakers in an ever-changing world. By engaging with a wealth of genres, highly engaging texts with rich and varied vocabulary in addition to inspirational authors, all children develop a breadth of experience that helps them to become confident, fluent readers who read not only to gain information, but for pleasure too. We are passionate about bringing this to life through a wide range of learning experiences, activities and events across the Trust developing children’s skills, imagination, and creativity collaboratively to ensure that every child is a reader and develops a love of reading.
At The Learning Academies Trust, we ensure that, as a minimum, pupils are taught the relevant content from the National Curriculum. We plan lessons that allow pupils to engage with a text and develop their fluency and comprehension of what they read. The aims of teaching reading, as outlined in the National Curriculum, are to ensure that all pupils:
Implementation | How and when do we teach what we teach?
Within our schools, pupils start their reading journey from day one through daily phonics sessions following a synthetic phonics programme-Read Write Inc. The Systematic Synthetic Phonics programmes are designed to ensure coverage of the phonic sounds detailed in the National Curriculum in a rigorous, lively and pacy fashion to secure their phonic knowledge and achieve success in early reading. In EYFS, pupils take part in a baseline assessment and regular assessments continue after this point to ensure that children’s needs are matched carefully. It ensures that pupils can access material at their correct level of phonological understanding and teachers can identify if there is any intervention needed. The sharing of stories, songs, poems, and rhymes daily through Key Stage One, alongside their phonics provision, ensures pupils are able and inspired to read for pleasure across the curriculum, and at home, as they move through KS1 into Year 2.
During year 2, the aim is that the majority of pupils will move from a systematic, synthetic phonics programme to whole class reading sessions where strategies like echo and choral reading are employed to increase fluency. From there, and throughout Key Stage Two, we teach the key reading comprehension skills of Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explaining, Retrieval, Summarising and Sequencing throughout a progressive, spiral reading curriculum which covers the National Curriculum objectives as a minimum. Oral and written comprehension tasks develop children’s opportunities to practise and apply their knowledge and understanding and as with all subjects, work is scaffolded or further challenge is provided where necessary, to enable everyone to access quality first teaching within the classroom. Across a half term, staff follow a rolling programme of Fiction/Non-Fiction/Poetry to ensure coverage of a variety of texts which link to the writing genres; these are supported by schools’ Literacy Spines. These engaging, diverse, and high-quality texts are shared daily with the whole class to celebrate and signify the importance of reading as well as to continue to expose the children to a diet of rich vocabulary.
Impact | How do we assess the impact of what we teach via pupil outcomes?
The impact of our reading curriculum is that children have a positive attitude to reading and enjoy reading. They become confident and successful learners’ who can achieve regardless of their starting points. Pupils will be able to read with more skill and so will know more, understand more and therefore do more reading. Teachers will use a range of formative and summative assessment in reading to assess the children’s understanding and ascertain what they need to do next.
Alongside the daily review of learning, pupils will be assessed more formally using a range of assessment procedures. With the SSPs, pupils are assessed every half term, as a minimum, to ensure that any gaps are identified, and learning matches their needs. In Year 1, children undertake the statutory Phonics Screening Check. Across the year, children will complete a range of testing, including NFER or practise SATs style assessments. These test results, along with the work and assessment from the term, will inform teacher assessment against the National Curriculum objectives.
Introduction
At The Learning Academies Trust, we are highly motivated to ensure that the disadvantages children face in their life circumstances do not affect their education, dreams, and futures. We are acutely aware of the vital role that language development, reading, writing and oracy skills have when it comes to accessing and enjoying education, as well as improving life chances, which is why we are dedicated to placing these life-skills at the heart of our curriculum.
Intent | What and why do we teach what we teach?
We expect the vast majority of pupils to move through the programmes of study at broadly the same pace. However, for children who lack fluency in writing or have a particular weakness that hinders their progress, we provide opportunities to consolidate their understanding through additional scaffolding (this could be through adult support or adapted work).
At Victoria Road, we start by identifying the language features and grammatical constructions that are needed for a particular genre. Pupils are provided with WAGOLLS (What a good one looks like) so that they are exposed to high quality models and can begin to understand what the outcome of a unit of learning will look like. We explicitly teach grammar as part of the writing process, which leads into shared writing, whereby pupils are shown how to apply what they have learnt through creating their own piece of writing. Every writing unit culminates in an independent piece of writing, which is used to celebrate success and identify next steps in learning. Objectives are de tailed in a medium-term plan to ensure that pupils are taught what they need to know to be successful in a progressive, logical way. Across a writing unit at Victoria Road, there are 4 clear stages: Immersion, Innovation – Planning Stage, Innovation – Shared Writing and Innovation – Independent Writing. Short term planning is completed on flipcharts using our standardised school proforma.
In EYFS, pupils are provided with a wealth of resources to develop their writing skills. Emergent writers can use various writing resources (chalk, paint, pens, pencils, water, and brushes) to practise making meaningful marks. Pupils can access these materials during independent learning times and use this to extend their play and ultimately their learning. This is enhanced through the delivery of RWI Phonics sessions in which pupils learn individual letter formation and how to hold and build sentences. Fine motor control activities are also provided in EYFS to ensure that pupils are ready for writing.
In the Autumn Term of Year 1 pupils are predominantly taught writing through the delivery of the RWI Phonics Programme. Through its consistent and systematic approach, children become confident in applying their phonics to writing. The programme includes many structured activities that enable children to write accurately and coherently, these activities include how to hold a sentence and how to edit sentences using their writing toolkits. Children also have lots of time to develop and share ideas through partner work, thinking out loud and orally rehearsing their sentences.
Children are also given opportunities to re-read their writing to check it makes sense and that it has the core components of a successful sentence/ piece of writing, i.e., capital letters, finger spaces, and full stops. This ensures that the core writing skills for Year 1, as outlined in the National Curriculum, are explicitly taught in a consistent, clear, and highly structured way, which supports the children in their early writing journey to write with confidence, accuracy, and coherency.
Implementation | How and when do we teach what we teach?
As pupils progress through Year 1, pupils continue to write in RWI Phonics programme and begin completing writing units as detailed in the LAT English Genre Matrix. The matrix recognises the importance of learning how to write fiction, non-fiction and poetry. As pupils progress through their time at Victoria Road, they will repeat genres which will allow for spaced learning and provide pupils with the opportunity to refine previously learnt skills and show an im proved level of sophistication with their writing. Across a term, teachers will plan to deliver a mini mum of one fiction unit, one non-fiction unit and one poetry unit. Units are no longer than 3-4 weeks, which means that there is time to include additional units. These additional units are often based around high-quality, inspiring books (often from the school’s Reading Spine) are used to address any gaps or misconceptions in learning.
To ensure that pupils are supported, challenged and ready to write extended pieces, pupils are provided with a range of challenges across a writing unit. Depending on the stage of writing, challenges will be planned accordingly. All challenges will be planned at an appropriate level, along with any necessary scaffolds. Scaffolds may be in the form of ‘Warm Up Challenges’ in SPAG lessons, an adapted writing toolkit in shared/independent writing, sentences stems, word banks or phonics sound mats.
At Victoria Road, we know that for children to be successful at spelling, a clear structure that consolidates and extends is needed. The Spelling Shed Programme is used in Years 1 to 6. This programme will ensure that pupils are taught all the required objectives from the National Curriculum. The Spelling Shed programme is taught in addition to writing lessons. Content from these lessons will then be applied in their writing lessons. In writing lessons, pupils are supported in addressing mis-spelling in a way that is appropriate to their age or stage. This progressive process of correcting spelling at Victoria Road aims to develop pupils’ independence.
At Victoria Road, we aim for pupils to be fluent, neat writers. In order for pupils to focus on the content of what they write, over time, pupils are taught how to write legibly and fluently so that the outcomes of their writing can be the focus. In EYFS and Year 1, pupils are taught how to form individual letter shapes as part of their RWI phonics lessons. Pupils are taught rhymes that support them in forming letters correctly. Year 1 to 4 also have separate handwriting lessons. In Year 2, pupils are taught how to join correctly to ensure that writing is neatly presented and easy to read. At the beginning of every long term, pupils complete their ‘My Best Handwriting’. This is used as a benchmark for upcoming handwriting presentation and acts as a reminder of what can be achieved.
Impact | How do we assess the impact of what we teach via pupil outcomes?
Teachers will use a range of formative and summative assessment in writing to assess the children’s understanding and what they need to do next. The design and delivery, along with assessment of pupils’ learning ensures that pupils will always know more, understand more and therefore do more. During the lesson, through live marking, questioning and tasks, teachers will check that the children have understood the focus of the learning. The teachers and teaching assistants will assess the pupils’ achievements against the learning objective. Feedback will be provided to support pupils in making progress. In EYFS, feedback is given at the point of learning. In KS1, pupils will have good examples shared to the whole class and then address misconceptions through either discussion with their class teacher or by answering next steps. From Year 2 onwards, Whole Class Feedback will be provided regularly. This celebrates successful learning but importantly supports pupils in addressing any errors or misconceptions. Pupils across the school are given time to respond to any feedback they have been given.
At the end of each writing unit, pupils complete an independent piece of writing which is marked against the LAT English Writing Assessment Tool to which is linked to year group National Curriculum expectations. Teachers use this tool to inform future planning and provide next steps to pupils. Across-year group and across-school moderation aims to ensure accuracy and consistency in teacher assessments and take place termly. Children are able to show that their writing knowledge and skills are developing as they apply them to a wide range of genres in a confident and successful way regardless of their starting point. This sense of achievement ensures a love of writing.
LAT Writing.
Victoria Road Primary School will be following LAT Writing from Jan 2024
Reading
Our Reading Spine
Our Reading for Pleasure spine
Enrichment
Useful Links:
www.booktrust.org.uk
www.literacytrust.org.uk
www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/z3882hv
www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zprrd2p