English

English at Park View  

Here at Park View we are passionate that every child is a motivated speaker, reader and writer every day. The development of English skills are embedded through our enquiry question led curriculum. We have fostered a love for reading and writing by having high quality texts as a driving force.

Speaking and Listening

-At Park View we recognise that listening is a fundamental life skill, therefore is encouraged and modelled in every year group.

-In all lessons children are given speaking and listening opportunities.

-Talk for learning is encouraged so that children can organise their thoughts, deepen their understanding and question their thinking.

-Children are developing their range of vocabulary through discussion.

Phonics

Intent

The teaching and learning of synthetic phonics will provide the foundations for every child to become a fluent and accurate reader. Our aim is that once children are able to decode fluently, the teaching of comprehension can more effective and allow for greater understanding and enjoyment. Our intent is for every lesson to be fast paced, highly interactive and ensure progress.

Implementation

At Park View Primary School we use the government validated scheme, ‘Essential Letters and Sounds.’ This allows our phonics teaching and learning to be progressive from our Two Year Olds up to Year 3. Children in our Nursery work on Phase One phonics, which concentrates on developing their speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the phonic work which starts in Phase 2. As children move into Reception they continue to build on their listening skills and are introduced to Phase 2 which marks the start of systematic phonics work. They have discrete, daily phonics sessions where they revise previous learning, are taught new graphemes/phonemes, practise together and apply what they have learnt. Through Essential Letters and Sounds, the children are taught the 44 phonemes that make up all the sounds required for reading and spelling. These phonemes include those made by just one letter and those that are made by two or more. Children work through the different phases and as they grow in confidence and experience, they are introduced to alternative ways of representing the same sound.

Phonics tracker is used to regularly assess the children. We are committed to identifying any gaps children have in their reading skills and closely monitor interventions to ensure that these gaps are closed. Every early reader will have a reading book that matches their decodability level to ensure children can gain an appropriate level of fluency.

Impact

Progress in Phonics is tracked using the Phonics tracker assessment tool and attainment is measured by the Phonics Screening Test at the end of Year 1 and then again at the end of Year 2 for those children who did not achieve the required standard at the end of Year 1.

We also monitor the impact of phonics teaching by lesson observations, pupil voice and 1:1 reading.

Reading

-Effective teaching, learning and assessment of phonics is paramount in our Early Years and Key Stage one to ensure children have the foundations to become fluent readers.

-We have recently introduced a new systematic synthetic phonics programme called Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS). This programme provides consistency in lesson structure and resources through Reception to Year 2. Each is lesson is fast paced, interactive and ensures progress.

-We understand the importance of children reading aloud books that are ‘consistent with their developing phonics knowledge’ (NC2016) and all our Early Readers at Park View have a decodable text which is banded by the ELS progression book list. This follows the order of when the GPCs are introduced in ELS.

-The development of reading skills, through KS1 and 2, are taught through our reading workshop approaches. One approach focuses on fluency and the other on the comprehension skills.

-Children are exposed to a range of rich texts which have been selected carefully to ensure the children are exposed to a variety of texts that covers a large amount of contexts. These texts are read aloud daily.

-Deliberate opportunities are planned in every subject for children to practise their reading skills.

-Children are continuously encouraged to read widely and often in school and at home.

-We promote the importance of reading and listening for pleasure.

Writing

-Children are given a range of purposes and audiences to write for across a range of genres.

-Learning journeys are carefully planned to relate to the appropriate enquiry question and the rich text drivers are an integral part of each year group’s long term plan.

-Each learning journey includes three stages to ensure high quality outcomes:

*Stimulate and Generate

*Capture, Sort and Sift

*Create, Refine and Evaluate

-The relationship between reading and writing is made explicit to children through the whole learning journey.

- There is clear progression in the development of Vocabulary, Punctuation and Grammar through the key stages.

-Teachers give children purposeful opportunities to re visit and apply new vocabulary learnt.

Spelling and Handwriting 

In KS1 children learn spellings which include the sounds they are learning in their Phonics, alongside high frequency words. In KS2 we use a range of strategies to teach spelling based on the following word building principles: phonemic, morphemic, orthographic, visual and etymological. 

Handwriting begins with mark marking in our Early Years Setting, moving onto letter formation and then to cursive script in the later part of year 2. Once handwriting is consistently joined, with fluidity, children will begin to write using pen.