English
Bidston Village C.E Primary School
English
Meet our English Team
Mrs Sue Gould-Jones is the English lead working in close collaboration with Denise Lynch Phonics lead for EYFS and Key stage 1 and Kate Bradley Phonics for KS2.
At Bidston Village we ensure that our English teaching and learning provides many purposeful opportunities for reading, writing and discussion. We use a wide variety of experiences, quality texts and resources to motivate and inspire our children
Intent
The National Curriculum (2014) forms the basis for all subject teaching ensuring continuity and progression in an age-related curriculum. In addition, teachers make sure the content is relevant and stimulating by delivering through themes and topics. Our English curriculum has been developed to recognise the importance of English in every aspect of daily life and to cultivate children’s love of reading, writing and discussion. We recognise the importance of nurturing a culture where children love to read, take pride in their writing and can clearly and accurately adapt their language and style for a range of contexts. As a Voice 21 school, we want to inspire children to be confident in the art of speaking and listening and to be able to use discussion to communicate and further their learning.
Our intent is to enable children to do the following:
• Read fluently and with good understanding
• Develop a routine of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
• Write clearly for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
• Develop a love of writing and be able to express their thoughts and ideas clearly and creatively through the written word.
• Re-read, edit and improve their own writing
• Confidently use the skills of grammar, punctuation and spelling
• Acquire a wide vocabulary for reading, writing and spoken language
• Use discussion in order to learn, elaborate and clearly explain their understanding and ideas
• Become competent in the art of speaking and listening, making presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate
Implementation
We ensure that our English teaching and learning provides many purposeful opportunities for reading, writing and discussion. We use a wide variety of experiences, quality texts and resources to motivate and inspire our children. All pupils receive a daily English lesson. Teachers also ensure that where applicable, cross curricular links with concurrent topic work are woven into the programme of study.
• Teachers create a positive reading and writing culture in school, where both are promoted, enjoyed and considered ‘a pleasure’ for all pupils
• Promotion of reading through teachers reading out loud regularly to their class
• Pupils in EYFS and KS1 (plus pupils in KS2 who require catch-up) to have daily phonics sessions, following Read, Write Inc
• Years 3-6, use the Read, Write Inc spelling scheme, delivering daily sessions.
• Whole class and guided reading sessions (from year 2 onwards) using Cracking Comprehension and ORT Project X Origins.
• Pupils are being adventurous with vocabulary choices
• Pupils to acquire strategies to enable them to become independent learners in English (spelling rules and patterns and how to tackle unfamiliar words when reading)
• Pupils to discuss and to present their ideas to each other by talking, being able to elaborate and explain themselves clearly, make presentations and participate in debates
• Vocabulary promoted through displays in class, enhancing and encouraging a wider use of vocabulary
• Teaching a range of genres across the school (progressing in difficulty) both in English and other curriculum areas; resulting in pupils being exposed to, and knowledgeable about, literary styles, authors and genres. They can express preferences and give opinions, supported by evidence, about different texts.
Impact
The impact and measure of this is to ensure children not only acquire the appropriate age-related knowledge linked to the science curriculum, but also skills which equip them to progress from their starting points, and within their everyday lives.
Long term, pupils will be able to do the following:
• Be confident in speaking and listening and to be able to use discussion to communicate and further their learning
• Be able to read fluently both for pleasure and to further their learning
• Enjoy writing across a range of genres
• Pupils of all abilities will be able to succeed in all English lessons because work will be appropriately scaffolded
• Have a wide vocabulary and be adventurous with vocabulary choices within their writing
• Have a good knowledge of how to adapt their writing based on the context and audience
• Leave primary school being able to effectively apply spelling rules and patterns they have been taught
• Make good and better progress from their starting points to achieve their full potential
• Pupils of all abilities will succeed in English lessons because work will be appropriately scaffolded.
Objectives
How do we use the teaching units?
The pathway through each Cracking Comprehension unit is flexible, according to the specific needs of our children. The range of content domains practiced during each unit is clearly indicated. This gives the opportunity to decide which assessable elements we want the children to practise.
Gathering and using evidence for diagnostic assessment
The outcomes for each task supply evidence for the regular review of children’s progress in reading. The teacher notes provide a question-by-question breakdown giving examples of likely outcomes for each question at three standards of achievement: children working towards the expected standard, at the expected standard and those working at greater depth within the expected standard.
For maximum flexibility, the tasks are designed to be administered in any order, and so a single benchmark standard is required. The benchmark used in all the tasks is the expected standard at the end of the year. As children typically make significant progress over the course of the year, you will need to take this into account when assessing children against expected progress, particularly for any tasks children attempt during the first half of the academic year. The questions for each task focus on several content domains from the new programme of study.
Using Cracking Comprehension with other Rising Star resources
National Test-style Standardised Assessments (NTS Assessments)
Content and test demand builds cumulatively term-by-term. This means that, by the end of the year, children are sitting a full National Test-style paper, with content sampled from the current year’s curriculum and also the years below. This allows accurate and effective progress tracking. The curriculum maps outline the content covered in every test, enabling you to ensure that relevant content has been taught by the time the students take the tests.
On Track Comprehension
On Track Comprehension is a structured intervention programme for children in Key Stage 2 who are falling behind in comprehension. One of the key areas of focus for ‘On Track Comprehension’ is developing vocabulary and skills for working out the meaning of words. This is in response to research which shows that a more limited vocabulary is one of the biggest barriers to accurate comprehension for many children. On Track Comprehension also provides opportunities for children to respond to texts orally, before they record written answers.
Rising Stars Cracking Comprehension ensures that our children develop the skills to apply their reading understanding in very focused and test-based scenarios.
Taught as whole class reading sessions, Cracking Comprehension lessons are focused around our reading gems (content domains), and focus on reading skills such as summarising and predicting using evidence from the text, evaluating, analysing and making judgements about characters’ motivations. There is a specific programme of work for each year group from Reception to Years 1-6 to follow including test-based practice and experience where skills are modelled, revised and assessed.
Introduction to Cracking Comprehension
In Reception
Cracking Comprehension Reception offers six comprehension teaching units and three assessment tasks which address and develop different skills needed for reading. At this level, the texts children access for comprehension should be slightly easier than those they can decode independently. For this reason, the texts here are carefully organised according to growth in decoding ability.
The intention is that we initially separate and teach comprehension skills to enable children to:
· Engage with, and understand, the text.
· Understand questions and identify the information needed.
· Match what they what they can see or read.
· Follow instructions as to how to respond to questions.
In addition, all texts have suggested listening comprehension questions that enable you to probe more deeply into the children’s understandings of the text. These questions have three key functions:
· to develop vocabulary, since it is widely accepted that one of the biggest barriers to good comprehension is limited vocabulary;
· to develop the comprehension skills that children will need to call upon;
· to encourage discussion around the text, exploring ideas which are beyond the children’s ability to read or record.
By using this structured progression, we can gradually prepare children not just to understand what they are reading, but also to demonstrate their understanding through written answers to comprehension questions.
In years 1 to 6
Cracking Comprehension teaches children the skills and strategies they need to successfully explain their understanding of a wide range of texts, and offers ideas to extend their enjoyment of, and engagement with, reading. It offers 15 comprehension units for each year organised by text type (fiction, non-fiction, playscripts and poetry), and includes full teacher and assessment guidance. The units have been chosen to support the expectations of the new National Curriculum for Key Stage 2 English. The texts can also be used as resources to complement your wider teaching.
Cracking Comprehension and the National Curriculum for English
The 2016 test framework recognises eight ‘content domains’ which can be assessed in reading tests and which primarily interrogate the reading comprehension objectives of the national curriculum.
Here you can see the content domain coverage for each Key Stage and year group