English

Reading

We LOVE reading at Roecliffe! Because its is such an essential life skill, we positively encourage all children to read on a daily basis in a variety of contexts. We also recognise that ‘Reading for Pleasure’ it a vital component in ensuring that all children become lifelong readers. We recognise and teach the two dimensions of reading – word reading and comprehension through a carefully planned and dynamic curriculum.

Reading Spine Substantive Knowledge Progression

Phonics

We have chosen Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised as our systematic, synthetic phonics programme to teach early reading and spelling. Phonics is taught daily from the very beginning in Reception and small group reading practise sessions are timetabled for three times a week.

• We ensure the teaching of phonics is systematic and consistent across school. The lessons are always taught at a fast pace to ensure children are highly engaged for the sessions.
• Teaching extends beyond ‘dedicated time’ and is applied and reinforced when appropriate throughout day. Teaching of the programme is evident across all curriculum areas and in EYFS/KS1 provision.
• Children’s decodable reading books are carefully matched to their phonic knowledge and which do not require use of alternative strategies. These books are organised in the given sequence in our chosen SSP programme i.e. reading books build letter-sound correspondences cumulatively, therefore children’s reading books are fully decodable at child’s current level to aid fluency.  Additionally, children have the opportunity to choose a book of choice from the Hive every week to share at home with an adult.
• Parents are helped to know how best to support children in learning sounds through our phonics workshops throughout the year.
•  Any child who needs extra support has daily keep-up sessions planned for them.

Click here for resources and videos to help you support your child to say the letters and sounds correctly.

Guided Reading 

Guided Reading is an approach to reading that supports children to develop not only their reading skills but also their comprehension skills. Children are all explicitly taught reading skills, then guided through answering questions through the use of modelling and then allowed opportunities to apply these skills independently. As a school, we plan guided reading questions around: a whole text linked to the class theme; on poetry where we compare and contrast authors; and on high quality non-fiction texts.

Reading through the curriculum

At Roecliffe,  we recognise the importance of developing reading skills and understanding through all areas of the curriculum.  We also understand the importance of ensuring that children enjoy reading and have a passion for books.  We try and achieve this in a number of ways:

• Share books and reading to the children daily  through a class reader
• Introducing children to a wide range of genres and developing book talk in the classroom
• Using other medias such as music, pictures or videos to reinforce reading skills
• Allowing regular opportunities for children to visit ‘The Hive’ to choose a book and read comfortably
• Providing a range of books the children can choose to read from

Writing

Our writing approach is centred around carefully chosen quality core texts, which expose children to a wealth of enriched vocabulary in which they feel confident to apply across a range of contexts. Through our clear and progressive sequence of teaching, children are provided with the knowledge, skills and vocabulary to produce beautifully published writing that is of a consistently high standard. Throughout school, we follow the same structure to our writing lessons. All sequences of writing planning follow the ‘3 C’s’ approach: collect, connect and create.

Collect:

Our teaching of writing starts with immersion in quality texts.  Children analyse high quality texts and identify features, setting the expectation of the final outcome and gaining an understanding or the purpose and audience. They gather and gain an understanding of technical vocabulary and phrases that they will be able to use in their own writing. Teacher’s use creative and innovative teaching methods and resources to inspire children including the use of; drama techniques, interviews with real people linked to writing purpose and a range of media.

Connect:

Teachers explicitly model and support the composition of writing, manipulating the collected content into sentences using grammar skills from the national curriculum. Through guided and shared practice, children construct sentences and develop their skills, continuously improving their work through our editing sessions.

Create:

Finally, children ‘Create’ their final published piece, after drafting sections or paragraphs of text using the writing skills taught within the connect phase. Children ‘write as readers’ by editing and improving their drafts which develops their final piece for their intended purpose and audience.

Spelling

We believe that becoming an accurate speller is an essential life skill and that confident spellers with a fluent handwriting style are free to concentrate on composition. We use a consistent approach to the teaching of spelling throughout Roecliffe. We follow Little Wandle Revised phonics programme in Reception and Year 1. In Years 2 to 6, we follow the No Nonsense spelling scheme which provides multiple and meaningful exposures to spellings. It focuses on the teaching of spelling knowledge and conventions, patterns and rules and the learning of spellings such as statutory words, common exception words and personal spellings.

Click on the links for the Autumn spelling overviews for each class-

Year 2/3        Year 4          Year 5/6

Click on the links for the Spring spelling overviews for each class-

Year 2/3         Year 4     Year 5/6

Click on the links for the Summer spelling overviews for each class-

Year 2/3      Year 4    Year 5/6