English
At Appleton Roebuck, we strongly believe that every child matters – from the most able to those who find learning a challenge, whatever their educational needs may be. We aim to give all of our children the best possible opportunities to develop their English skills, in order that they can achieve the highest possible standards of which they are capable. We aim to provide a rich language environment, which not only stimulates and supports each child’s language development, but also reflects the rich and diverse society that we live in.
We offer a broad and balanced range of experiences for every child, catering for visual, aural and kinaesthetic learners.
Reading
We aim for all pupils to become independent, confident and fluent readers, both aloud and silently for increasingly sustained periods of time. A range of different approaches is adopted, including the whole class study of texts, group and paired reading activities, reading circles, as well as many opportunities for reading for pleasure for example, through regular visits to our local library.
We aim for children to be able to:
- Read a wide range of texts, both fiction and non-fiction, developing their powers of imagination, inventiveness and critical awareness.
- Read with a ‘writerly’ eye.
- Be able to choose their own reading materials both for information and for pleasure, and evaluate and justify their preferences.
- Use their reading skills across the curriculum.
- Be able to orchestrate a full range of reading cues (phonic, graphic, syntactic, contextual) to monitor their reading and correct their own mistakes.
- Be taught to navigate texts e.g. skimming, scanning, information retrieval, visualising and predicting.
- Be taught comprehension strategies e.g. speculating, deducing, inferring, interpreting, making connectives and authorial intent.
• Develop responses e.g. likes, dislikes, puzzles, questioning, re-evaluating, connecting with own experience, empathising, referring to text to support views, considering overall impact.
Phonics
EYFS and KS1 teachers use ‘Read, Write Inc.’, as the core basis for teaching phonics. It is a systematic programme of high-quality phonic work, time limited and reinforced throughout the curriculum with careful assessment and monitoring of children’s progress as they move from learning to read towards reading to learn, engaging with diverse texts for purpose and pleasure.
Phonics teaching is carefully planned, reinforcing and building on previous learning to secure children’s progress. It is taught discretely and daily and is engaging and multi-sensory.
Writing
Through our teaching, children will be made aware that print carries meaning, and understand the purposes of writing. To promote emergent writing, children will be encouraged to ‘write’ independently and be asked to ‘read’ their writing to others. This will always be valued. To support the emergent writer, shared/guided reading and writing sessions will be used to feed in the conventions of writing.
Teachers at all stages will present and/or read good quality examples of different forms of writing in shared reading and writing sessions. Children will be encouraged to redraft and edit their writing and will support others to do the same.
Our aims are that children will:
- Enjoy writing, and see it as interesting, useful and challenging.
- Be aware of the key features of fiction and non-fiction texts.
- Know, understand and be able to write in a range of genres, both fiction and non-fiction.
- Be able to write for different purposes and audiences, considering the composition and effect appropriate to the text being produced.
- Have a solid understanding of the writing process, becoming reflective writers by planning, evaluating and redrafting their work.
Handwriting
We set high expectations for children’s handwriting and presentation skills.
Our aims are for children to:
- Develop a logical, fluent and consistent style of writing.
- Achieve high standards of presentation throughout all areas of the curriculum.
- Be encouraged to evaluate their handwriting and presentation.
Speaking & Listening
Talk is an underlying key factor in the development of Literacy (as well as a central feature of any successful teaching and learning activity). Given the significance of speaking and listening for children’s learning and overall language development, we ensure that there is adequate curriculum time for it to be explicitly taught and to identify places in the timetable where children can revisit, apply and extend the speaking and listening skills which they have been explicitly taught.
We ensure that there are planned opportunities for pupils to speak in different contexts, listen and respond to others, engage in group activities and discussion, and take participate in drama sessions.
