ENGLISH

Communicating with others is an essential life skill and, as a major world language, using English confidently is key to this. All the skills of language are vital to participating fully as a member of society and underpin learning in every area of the curriculum.

Success in English enables pupils to write and speak fluently and so convey their ideas and emotions to others, at school and beyond. Similarly, through their reading and listening, children can begin to appreciate the world from other viewpoints. English literature – being particularly rich, creatively diverse and influential – offers huge scope for cultural, emotional, intellectual, social and spiritual development.

At St. John’s, we aim to offer pupils a rich and exciting English curriculum, based on high-quality texts, to inspire reading and writing for pleasure and to instil a love of language and literature. We want St. John’s School to be one where reading flourishes and where pupils are equipped with a strong command of the written and spoken word, enabling them to become successful lifelong learners. We aim to ensure that all pupils:

• Read easily, fluently and with good understanding

• Develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
• Appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
• Acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
• Use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas
• Are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate

• Write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences, including the creation of multi-modal and digital texts.

Phonics:

We want pupils to enjoy reading. For reading to be a pleasurable activity, children need to be able to read texts with automaticity and fluency. At St. John’s we aim to equip all pupils with the skills to blend sounds to read words with high-quality, fast-paced daily phonics lessons from the first weeks in our Reception class. We use ‘Unlocking Letters and Sounds’, a systematic and synthetic phonics programme, accredited and validated by the DfE which integrates visual and kinaesthetic resources (see the ‘Phase 2 actions, sounds and handwriting patters’ below). We demonstrate fidelity to this programme from the outset – using books and resources aligned to the scheme – to support teaching and learning, enabling children to progress quickly.

In Reception, the children begin to learn the main sounds (phonemes) in the English language and the letters and combinations of letters (graphemes) that can be used to represent these sounds. They also learn ‘Common Exception Words’ (words which cannot always be soundtalked) from Phases 2, 3 and 4. Children use the sounds they know to read and write simple words and sentences, using ‘patters’ to support their letter formation. On leaving Reception, children can read and apply the Phase 2, 3 and 4 phonemes and Common Exception Words taught. (See the Progression document, below.)

In Year One, children continue to develop their phonic knowledge through ‘Unlocking Letters and Sounds’ in phases 5a, b and c. They learn alternative pronunciations and spellings of sounds and add to their bank of Common Exception Words. All children are screened in Year One, using the national phonics screening check, by which time they have become skilled at the use of phonics to blend for reading and segment to write words.

In Year Two, phonics is revisited once again in order to secure mastery in applying the phonetic code.

Children are regularly assessed throughout, so that those not meeting age related expectations, or in danger of falling behind, can be supported through bespoke interventions. The lowest attaining 20% of pupils are monitored closely to ensure that these interventions are impactful. Interventions include blending and segmenting activities and practising Grapheme Phoneme Correspondences (GPCs).

In Key Stage Two, children use ‘Unlocking Letters and Sounds’ as a tool to support spelling.

Phase 2 actions, sounds and handwriting patterns. 

ULS Progression Phases 2 – 5 

Reading:

We promote a ‘phonics first’ approach to reading at St, John’s. Books used for reading lessons in school and taken home by children to practise reading are entirely decodable and closely matched to a child’s current phonic knowledge, enabling every child to succeed and experience satisfaction in their reading.

In the early stages of phonics acquisition, children mainly practise reading books published by ‘Ransom House Reading Stars’ in partnership with ‘Unlocking Letters and Sounds’. We continue to use other decodable books (for example ‘Collins Big Cat’) which also match the sounds and Common Exception Words taught through the ‘Unlocking Letters and Sounds’ programme.

Children in EYFS and Key Stage One are given one fully decodable home reading book each week, closely matched to their phonic knowledge. Weekly reading lessons at school, teach decoding, word recognition, vocabulary, fluency, prosody and strategies to aid comprehension. Each child’s reading progress is closely monitored so that those children in danger of falling behind can be supported with interventions to support their needs.
Research indicates that parents are key to a child’s reading progress and that a strong home-school partnership with shared reading values provides the best foundation for success in reading. We hope that parents share our ambitions for reading success and strongly encourage parents to listen to their child read at home between three times a week and daily according to year group. We offer phonics and reading workshops to help parents and carers to confidently support their children, as well as occasional opportunities to learn alongside children in phonics or reading lessons.

Reception and KS1 pupils also self-select non-decodable ‘reading for pleasure’ library books to share at home with their families. Children are not expected to read these independently. Instead, it is hoped that adults will enjoy spending time reading these books to – and discussing books with – their children, in the comfort of the home, to expose them to a broad range of rich vocabulary and encourage a culture of valuing books and reading.

All classes have attractive, well-stocked book areas and daily opportunities are planned for pupils and teachers to read independently from a book of their own choice and to participate in informal, child-led book-talk. All teachers at St. John’s enjoy reading and have developed a book-led curriculum using high-quality texts, thereby embedding books at the heart of all we do. Teachers read aloud to their classes every day, promote reading daily and welcome the opportunity to celebrate local, national and worldwide book-related events, for example author/illustrator visits, World Book Day and National Poetry Day. The school has an excellent relationship with the local town library, which welcomes our pupils, many of whom participate in the library’s Summer Reading Challenge.

From Year 1 onwards, children’s reading fluency is assessed twice a year and, when children are below the expected level, they are given additional support. The lowest attaining 20% of readers are heard reading aloud in school at least three times a week by an adult (including their class teacher).

Expert reading goes beyond being able to decode with fluency. Comprehension skills and the reader’s enthusiasm, enjoyment and stamina also play their part, and these aspects of reading are taught explicitly and encouraged throughout a pupil’s time at St. John’s. Classes engage in a combination of choral, shared, guided and independent reading from books, class teaching boards and digital sources, using a variety of text types, genres and styles. In this way, teachers encourage reading for purpose and pleasure whilst modelling how to give consideration to punctuation for reading prosody and methods of tackling new vocabulary using phonic, syntactic and semantic strategies in guided reading sessions each week.

Writing:

We want all children to learn to love writing and be engaged in and excited by real life opportunities to write. Wherever possible, we encourage children to write for a purpose and we share the final piece of writing with an audience (for example, parents or other classes in school) and most pieces of writing start with a ‘hook’ such as a real life WOW experience, artefacts or visitor.

Writing is an art, a sequential process that demands a complex combination of physical and mental skills developed across many areas, not solely writing. We aim to develop the children’s talent for crafting engaging, well-structured texts, covering the transcription and composition requirements of the National Curriculum, by building on what they know already to weave purposeful writing into all areas of the curriculum and make links between subjects.

Writing in our classes is primarily book-led, although we use a variety of teaching and learning methods, to enrich the learning process and help children to develop a rich vocabulary with which to enhance their own writing. The curriculum incorporates speaking and listening, writing and composition through well-planned and structured teaching sequences which enables children to make progress with their writing from basic mark-making in Reception through to writing independently for a wide variety of purposes and audiences in Year 6.

Teachers model the process of writing, demonstrating both the basic skills necessary and the high expectations of all. WAGOLLs (‘What A Good One Looks Like’ exemplars) are used across the school to show children what they are aiming for in their writing. WAGOLLs model what high quality vocabulary, spelling and punctuation looks like and demonstrate how to write effectively for a particular purpose and audience.

Once the writing has been modelled, teachers work together with the children to produce a piece of shared writing.

Finally, pupils are able to use the knowledge and understanding they have developed to plan, independently write and edit their own piece of work.

Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar:

Pupils are encouraged to apply their knowledge of the phonic code and to investigate and recognise spelling patterns when spelling new words. They are taught to use dictionaries and other aids to support vocabulary selection and correct spelling.

Once pupils have a secure knowledge and understanding of phonics, we use the Spelling Shed Scheme from Year 3 onwards to explicitly teach spelling. Pupils have weekly spelling lessons looking at phonics as well as the etymology and morphology of words. They then practise these spellings online as part of their weekly spelling homework.

Rather than having weekly spelling tests, every pupil is given five words to focus on learning to spell. This is based on their individual learning need. Once the pupil has spelled a word correctly three times in their writing, the word is replaced for another word.

Punctuation and grammar are taught, in the context of writing, daily across Years 2 to 6 and weekly in Year 1. The high-quality class texts and WAGOLLs provide models of effective writing and are used to teach specific language features and to address misconceptions identified in children’s written work. Pupils then have the opportunity to practise the aspect of grammar or punctuation being taught in the shared and independent writing that they complete.