English
Speaking & Listening
We aim to encourage children to express themselves and to communicate fluently and articulately, with clarity and purpose, in an interesting and varied manner. Similarly, they are encouraged to listen and to appreciate other speakers with all their variations of tone, vocabulary, dialect and content.
Activities will build upon the oral language and experiences, which pupils bring from home. We aim to give the children the skills to read for both pleasure and information and to give them study skills in the use of reference books. Teaching will cover a range of stimulating literature, both fiction and non-fiction, and should ensure that pupils regularly hear and share stories and poetry.
Reading & Writing
Success in reading is achieved through partnership between home and school. Therefore, we encourage children to take an independent reading book, a library book and an individual school planner/reading record, which we ask you to sign when you hear them read. Positive parental comments in this booklet will be much appreciated and questions to challenge your child’s reading can be found within the planner/reading record. We ask that parents accept the responsibility for the care and return of all books. Book bags are available for purchase from the school office.
We offer a huge variety of books for your children to read, including those from high quality reading schemes and a variety of ‘real books’ that can be found in the school libraries. We ask parents to share in the teaching of reading both at home and in school. We offer a weekly ‘Book Time’ session every Thursday from 8:50-9:10am and we warmly invite you to spend these sessions reading with your child.
Read Write Inc. Phonics is taught daily in EYFS and KS1 and for those who require in KS2. The children are taught in differentiated groups, to allow us to meet their needs successfully. All children in Years 1-6 will be given a weekly spelling list to learn as homework and will be tested weekly, results will be written in the child’s reading record/school planner. Our English teaching is based on the National Curriculum and grammar skills are taught regularly. We teach different genres of fiction writing, including poetry and a variety of non-fiction text types through the ‘talk for writing’ storytelling approach. We endeavour to have interesting, dynamic learning experiences to suit all learning styles on offer to excite and enthuse our children about English.
At Redwell Primary School, the children enjoy English and have embraced the Storytelling techniques, not just in English lessons but across the wider curriculum too. Our texts are at the heart of our curriculum and feed into all other subjects through the deepening stages. With reading and storytelling comes a wealth of vocabulary, by the time a child has completed their learning journey with us, they will have a readymade word bank at their disposal. They will also have been exposed to over forty different stories, ranging from quest stories, to stories from different cultures. We believe that by following the Storytelling School approach, we are not only developing literacy skills but also allowing children’s confidence to flourish.
Progression Maps