Thrybergh Fullerton

Reading Intent

The aim at Thrybergh Fullerton is to provide opportunities for children to develop as independent, confident, resilient and successful, life-long learners.

Through the implementation of a broad and balanced curriculum, we aim for our children to have high aspirations and to make an active and positive contribution to their school, their community and the wider society; now and in the future. We want our children to be equipped with the skills and knowledge to be able to keep themselves safe and healthy both mentally and physically.

Our reading curriculum is intended to quickly teach children how to read, so that they can then, “read to learn.” We intend to do this through a systematic synthetic phonics programme (RWI). Using this programme, we intend for children to crack the phonics code and begin to develop a love of reading – reading for pleasure and for purpose through the rest of the curriculum. Alongside this we intend to develop children's language acquisition and bridge the vocabulary gap, so that our children have an understanding of what they are reading. Reading underpins children’s chances of success across the primary curriculum and in further life, and can provide them with experiences and knowledge beyond their homes and school setting. “All the reading she had done had given her a view of life that they had never seen.” Roald Dahl, Matilda. We intend through our reading books to expose children to a range of cultural experiences and to take children on unforgettable journeys, developing children who love to read. “Reading can take you places you have never been before.” Dr Seuss

Writing Intent

The aim at Thrybergh Fullerton is to provide opportunities for children to develop as independent, confident, resilient and successful, life-long learners.

Through the implementation of a broad and balanced curriculum, we aim for our children to have high aspirations and to make an active and positive contribution to their school, their community and the wider society; now and in the future. We want our children to be equipped with the skills and knowledge to able to keep themselves safe and healthy both mentally and physically.

Our writing curriculum is intended to build on what the children have learnt within their reading; through careful analysis of texts, development of vocabulary and through topic links children are given opportunities to write for a purpose and creatively for a range of different audiences. They are able to use ICT as well as been given opportunities to practise their presentational skills for finished pieces by hand. We intend to give our children the relevant real-life / cultural experiences needed to base their writing on through visits out, visitors in and other first-hand learning opportunities.

Literacy Curriculum Information

The National Curriculum is followed for the teaching of literacy in our school.

The overarching aim for English in the national curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written language, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment. The national curriculum for English aims 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.
• acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language.
• appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage.
° write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.
• 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.'

Speaking and listening:

As a school we place great importance on speaking and listening and this starts with the Foundation stage and is carried on all through school. We aim to make sure that children in the foundation stage have daily access to good models for speaking and listening both with staff and their peers. As has been said in Back on Track – Fewer things, greater depth – Mary Myatt, “talk is important is that it creates the conditions for inference.” “Talk is an entitlement for every pupil. Having one's voice heard is at the root of confidence” “It is through listening to the ideas of others that we can expand our own knowledge and understanding.”

We aim to have enhanced opportunities for speaking and listening in school both in literacy and across other subjects such as debates in history etc.   Children in the foundation who are not expected in speaking and listening access talking tables, talk boost and have speedy Speech and language referrals where needed.

Phonics:

RWI has been selected as it quickly teaches children the sounds and moves them onto blending. This scheme is also used for writing whilst children are still at a phonics stage so they are writing at their phonic level.   We continue using RWI in year two and when children have completed RWI phonics they move onto RWI comprehension, again this ensures that children are now using and applying their phonics skills in order to move onto more complex understanding of the texts and writing in more depth. Through all of the stages in RWI it gives teachers the subject knowledge they need and gives clear direction on how this should be delivered ensuring continuity for all staff delivering this. It also gives opportunities for blending and encoding in one session and access to high quality resources at the correct phonic level for the children without spending time looking online and downloading resources which may not be of the same quality.

Reading beyond and outside of phonics:

 
Reading is taught as a priority through school, we strongly believe as a staff that the quicker children learn to read the better their future outcomes, and the easier they can access the rest of the curriculum.  In FS1 there is a big focus on communication and language to ensure that when the children leave FS1 they have strong language comprehension ready to start to learn phonics in FS2.   This is done through well timed incidental opportunities in continuous provision as well as well planned and purposefully selected tasks.  Children share a book in a small group (¾) basis with an adult once a week. Through school we have a daily story which allows our children to access books which may be beyond their reading ability, developing their language and understanding further and giving them the opportunity to feel immersed in the experience of having a book read to them. We believe all children no matter what their background is have the right to stories being read to them and have the potential to love reading. We want to foster the love of reading and this is one of the ways we do this.    Other ways we develop the love of reading for our children are by taking part in world book day and activities around the books in class, reading clubs, virtual author visits, Shakespeare week, recommended reads, showing children through displays in school that reading is a high priority and is fun, book flix events and we take part in the Rotherham loves reading activities.

Once children have completed RWI phonics they move firstly onto RWI comprehension then whole class reading to continue to develop their comprehension skills and to practise their decoding and fluency.  Children who need to develop their fluency are given extra time to work on this, so that their working memory is freed up to enjoy the books they have access to.

Children through school access a very rich reading curriculum.  Each day a child will access a phonics lesson, guided reading or cracking reading session, literacy lesson, class story and they will be practising their reading throughout other subjects.  We seek every available opportunity for children to apply and practise their reading skills.   We have a carefully planned list of books for each year group which has been devised using the recommended reads from cornerstones (to go with the topics), a selection of key authors and classic books and the recommended reads from the Pie Corbett reading spine.  We have also taken into account the lexile value of these books to ensure challenge at the right level.   

Cracking reading, literacy shed and headstart are used to support teachers when teaching reading.

Writing

In the foundation stage mark making is available throughout all of the continuous provision, in each phonics lesson children are taught to encode as well as decode. 

RWI Get writing is used alongside RWI phonics.

Spelling: Once completed phonics children then move onto RWI spelling, following the same procedures they have done since FS2 for example: dots and dashes and dictation.

Grammar and Punctuation: We use skills builders for teaching this as it is progressive and gives time for retrieval practise ensuring the knowledge that children acquire sticks.   We teach this one week as a discrete lesson and then one week applied in the writing lesson.

Writing genres: Children use cracking writing to further deepen their understanding of a text type before writing their own.    Therefore, they would carry out a comprehension on the text type to ensure their understanding and check for unknown vocabulary followed by two / three days analysing this at text, language and sentence level. The following week would then be used to enable children to use all of this information to plan and write their own text.   As a school we have mapped out the genres covered in each group to ensure that children are regularly exposed to a range of writing and also have the opportunity to apply these skills again to practise and improve on the work they did before.   Children also have the opportunity to practise their writing in all other subjects.   

Handwriting: We use the Nelson handwriting scheme.