English: Reading
Intent
At Teesville Academy, we place reading at the heart of everything we do: it is the key to unlock the curriculum and the world we live in.
Our aims are for our pupils to:
- Develop competence in the skills of Oracy (speaking and listening), asking and responding to questions and participating in discussions
- Understand the meaning of what they read and what is read to them
- Develop a lifelong enjoyment of reading, taking pleasure from what has been read
- Appreciate and value the rich and varied literary heritage from around the world
- Read confidently and fluently and seek to acquire knowledge independently
- Develop the reading skills they need to access all areas of the curriculum.
- Read critically to ascertain what the truth is in a statement so that they may gain a balanced understanding of local, national and international issues
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Implementation: Guided Reading To be able to read for understanding and enjoyment, it is essential for children to become accurate and efficient readers, for whom decoding is an automatic process. EEF research supports this and concluded that the ability to read fluently allows children to free up their attention to focus on the meaning of what they read  |
Daily Guided Reading lessons
Children from years 2-6 take part in daily guided reading lessons. Within these lessons, the main focus of teaching and learning is placed on the following 6 areas:
- Word meaning and vocabulary choices
- Retrieval and recording
- Sequencing
- Making inferences with justifications
- Making comparisons
- Predicting
Impact
Children become confident and fluent readers, who understand the importance of being able to read in order to learn, and who are passionate and enthusiastic about reading. They show that they are:
- Proud to be readers
- Eager to read
- Able to discuss books with each other
- Confident when reading aloud with an adult or in front of their peers
- Able to read a text and comprehend its meaning
- Able to use their reading skills to gain knowledge in all areas of the curriculum
- Aware of the different genres
- Reading for pleasure
- Developing awareness of a range of poetry
- Developing perspective of a range of authors
- Building a library of books and stories to take with them through their life
Reading at Home
Enjoying a book with your child is a fantastic way to share adventures and experiences together, and it’s the best way to get them reading for life. Here are some tips for raising a reader;
- Make books part of your family life – Always have books around so that you and your children are ready to read whenever there’s a chance.
- Join your local library – Get your child a library card, you'll find tons and tons of fantastic books. Allow them to pick their own books, encouraging their own interests.
- Match their interests – Help them find the right book - it doesn’t matter if it’s fiction, poetry, comic books or non-fiction.
- All reading is good – Don’t discount non-fiction, comics, graphic novels, magazines and leaflets. Reading is reading and it is all good.
- Get comfortable! – Snuggle up somewhere warm and cosy with your child, either in bed, on a beanbag or on the sofa, or make sure they have somewhere comfy when reading alone.
- Ask questions – To keep them interested in the story, ask your child questions as you read such as, ‘What do you think will happen next?’ or ‘Where did we get to last night? Can you remember what had happened already?’
- Read whenever you get the chance – Bring along a book or magazine for any time your child has to wait, such as at a doctor’s surgery.
- Read again and again – Encourage your child to re-read favourite books and poems. Re-reading helps to build up fluency and confidence.
- Bedtime stories – Regularly read with your child or children at bedtime. It’s a great way to end the day and to spend valuable time with your child. This special time doesn't have to stop once your child can read independently!
- Rhyme and repetition – Books and poems which include rhyme and repetition are great for encouraging your child or children to join in and remember the words. Enjoying a poem is a brilliant way to foster a love of language and there are lots of hilarious and imaginative books of poetry for children.
English: Writing
Intent
At Valley Road, enabling children to become confident, compelling and purposeful writers is something we value greatly. We focus on children being able to use the knowledge they learn, to produce purposeful, well-crafted, creative and informative written work. By the time they leave Valley Road, children will understand that writing is a craft which is developed through repeated practice in order to improve.
We want our children to be part of a community of writers and authors and provide them with many different experiences so that they are ‘hooked in’ and inspired to write.
We want to develop writers who:
- develop a life-long stamina and love for writing throughout the school.
- are immersed in a variety of genres and have a clear understanding of text types and their purpose.
- have a clear understanding of purpose.
- have an understanding of intended impact of writing skills and tools.
- have the ability to carefully select vocabulary with careful attention to the desired effect on the readers’ thoughts and feelings.
- Understand how to plan, draft, improve and edit their work so it can be the best it can be and achieve the desired effect.
- Are able to use and create their own success-criteria.
- Use resources independently to support their writing.
- Use their reading and word collections.
Implementation
Children are encouraged to view writing as a writing journey. The expectation of what children should include within their work is planned for, in long and medium term plans, based on NC expectations for each year group.
An English journey is planned for each genre taught and is divided into these sections usually over a 2 to 3-week period:
- Immersion into high-quality texts to identify & define features
- Identify the audience, purpose and style of writing
- Practice of skills-Word and Sentence Level work (including Alan Peat)
- Modelled and Shared Writing
- Planning, Drafting, Editing and Publishing a written piece of writing
An emphasis is placed upon building skills and vocabulary, and developing stamina to produce high-quality writing. Children learn the main rules and conventions of written English at word and sentence level. we explicitly teach children a range of sentence structures, based on Alan Peat’s ‘Writing Exciting Sentences’. Punctuation and Grammar is taught and re-visited during 'Warm-up with Wor
Impact
The intended impact is that all pupils will have the knowledge and skills to be able to write successfully for a range of purposes and audiences and that pupils of all abilities will be able to succeed in English lessons because learning will be appropriately scaffolded and challenging.
By the end of Key Stage 2, children will have developed a writer’s craft, will have stamina for sustained writing and understand how language, grammar and punctuation can be manipulated for effect.
We measure the impact of our teaching through regular assessment (both formal and informal) as well as internal and external moderation.
ds' at the start of each lesson. Children also learn how the English language can be used to express meaning in different ways.