English at Withymoor

Writing

Writing Intent:

It is our intent that children are inspired by high-quality literature and a range of stimuli, which makes readers engage with and enjoy writing. Writing for a variety of purposes and audiences, the children apply progressively more complex skills to communicate ideas fluently and with interesting detail in a range of genres. We also intend to create writers who can re-read, edit and improve their own writing, and enable pupils to be able to confidently use the essential skills of grammar, punctuation and spelling. We recognise the importance of a wide and varied vocabulary and aim to support our pupils to develop this by explicitly teaching them through demonstration writing and discussion.  We do this so that all of our pupils can confidently apply vocabulary in their own writing to extend detail, add description and chose purposefully for clarity and impact.

Implementation

At Withymoor, our writing curriculum is based on the National Curriculum and we use Read into Writing and high quality texts to drive the teaching of writing to provide exciting and well-structured English lesson.  Children are exposed to a range of texts and genres, enabling them to develop a deep understanding of how authors develop characters, settings and themes in a text.  They explore the language and literary techniques used by authors and then apply them to their own writing.

Teachers choose quality texts from the Read into Writing document above to deliver high-quality English lessons,

Please visit your child's class page for more details about the texts they will be using this year.

Reading

Reading Intent: 

Reading lies at the heart of the curriculum at Withymoor. We are dedicated to enabling our pupils to become lifelong readers and we believe reading is key for academic success. It is our intent that children will read widely and often at home and school for pleasure, for information and to expand and enhance their knowledge and understanding across all subjects. They are immersed in a reading curriculum that is rich and varied. Teachers model expert reading and encourage reading for pleasure by sharing quality texts with children every day.  Teachers also use quality texts to inspire our writing curriculum.

Reading Implementation

Early reading skills are taught using Little Wandle phonic and supported by providing children with decodable books.  As children become more independent readers, we use VIPERS (Vocabulary Inference Prediction Explain Retrieval Summarise) to teach the skills needed to comprehend the texts that they are reading.  Teachers read a class text to the class every day and spend time exploring other texts in groups.

Spoken Language

Intent 

Pupils will be able to:

• Communicate effectively, speaking with increasing confidence, clarity and fluency
• Participate in discussions and debate in a variety of contexts
• Listen to the views, opinions and ideas of others with increased interest
• Articulate ideas and thoughts clearly with appropriate tone and vocabulary recognising audience
• Respond to questions and opinions appropriately
• Retell stories and poems which are known by heart
• Ask questions with increasing relevance and insight

Implementation

Skills will be developed through:

• providing a range of opportunities for children to talk and listen in formal and informal settings
• whole class, and group guided reading and writing sessions led by the class teacher or supported by classroom assistants;
• the use of drama and role play to explore imagined situations;
• links between language and music exploring rhythm.
• a daily story time when the teacher read aloud to the class for enjoyment;
• class discussion and debate, showing times or news sharing when pupils are encouraged to speak to a large group or class;
• paired and small group sharing of ideas and verbalizing prior to writing;
• interviewing carried out as part of cross curricular work;
• visiting drama groups used when possible;
• local theatre visits
• other visits to places of educational interest are used to develop and extend language and provide opportunities for its use;
• participation in school assemblies and productions as well as the School Council.

Please click on your child's class page for more information.