English

English Policy

The development of children’s language is crucial to their success in life.  Communication is fundamental in all aspects of learning. All children should be given opportunities that enable them to have the necessary skills to speak clearly and with confidence and to develop a love of reading and writing.

At St John the Baptist children we strive to help all children become confident and enthusiastic speakers, readers and writers. Through daily and varied English lessons we focus activities to provide opportunities to develop reading, writing and speaking & listening skills for different purposes.  

Reading

At St John the Baptist we encourage reading in all guises. From a picture book to a newspaper, a fantasy to a biography. Books are central to all we do. All staff promote this love of reading and their shared ethos that reading is the most important skill a child can have. Children are read to several times a day as a class group. Peer to Peer reading groups happen each morning between the key stages so that the older children feel part of the learning process in our school.

Each class has an inviting space with a wide range of fiction and non-fiction books available, children also have access to the school library. There are multiple opportunities across the day for children to read in school.

In Reception, we begin teaching children to read using the Little Wandle phonics scheme. Children have daily phonics lessons and also read regularly in small groups. Children bring home decodable reading books matched to their phonics phase.

Once children have completed the Little Wandle scheme, books from a range of published reading schemes are used to structure the development of children’s reading skills. Covering both fiction and non-fiction, books are colour-coded in levels. Children are encouraged to choose a book from those at their level and the teacher assesses when a child is ready to move to another level. Children read to staff and peers.

Writing

At St John the Baptist we use the Power of Reading programme scheme of learning for writing and reading. This gives the children a wide genre of books to learn from and enables learning to be done through a wide range of different methods such as: drama, oracy skills and in depth exploration of a narrative.

A high quality text is explored over several weeks. Children discuss and investigate the text through creative activities. The units also explore several genres of writing around one text. For example, they may have a narrative book that lends itself to letter writing but also to non-chronological report writing. Children have been able to deepen their knowledge of writing genres and their ability to read and understand wide range of texts, whilst progressing in their writing skills.

Spelling

From Year 2, children practise spellings and letter patterns at home. Through a variety of methods and the purple mash spelling strategy, children are taught the national curriculum spelling words. They are taught spelling patterns, such as prefixes and suffixes, children also learn to recognise common spelling patterns and conventions.

Grammar and punctuation is taught as part of literacy and using the purple mash grammar scheme. Children explore how to construct different forms of sentences, and to make these clear to the reader with accurate punctuation. Through reading rich texts, children learn to use and deploy punctuation and constructions that enhances written language.