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English

Speaking and Listening

Intent:

The ability to clearly express oneself through the spoken word and to listen carefully to others, is an essential skill throughout a child’s education and beyond in the wider world. At Field Junior school, we believe these are key skills for pupils to learn and that they must be explicitly developed in children if they are to achieve the highest levels of communication.

Our intention is therefore to improve children’s speaking and listening skills so they are able to communicate effectively and confidently in front of any type of audience.

Implementation:

We believe that good communication skills can enhance every type of learning; therefore, speaking and listening skills are embedded in every area of our curriculum. The children are encouraged to explore ideas through talk; to challenge each other’s opinion and to develop their own reasoned arguments, as well as talking in full sentences with a clear and confident voice.

There are many planned speaking and listening experiences at Field Junior, including:

  • Talking partners
  • Listening and responding to class readers
  • Guided reading sessions
  • 1:1 and small group reading sessions
  • Drama
  • Preparation for writing including: shared writing; peer marking and engagement lessons
  • Visiting speakers
  • Giving and receiving instructions
  • Paired/collaborative work in all subjects
  • Problem solving in maths
  • Assemblies
  • School parliament: preparation and participations
  • Pupil voice activities
  • Productions
  • Reading ambassadors: interview preparation and participation
  • Reading fluency in reading

Reading

Every class carries out a Reading lesson four times a week. Each class is exposed to a variety of texts including fiction, non-fiction and poetry. The teacher will spend some time reading through the text with the class and discussing meaning and vocabulary with the class in the first session, the next sessions will be spent answering questions (independently where possible) about the text, which will have one session focused on inference. The children will work from the same text throughout the week to ensure fluency and automaticity. The teacher will model how to answer the questions and the child will correct their answers using green pen.

Intent:

It is our intent to provide all pupils with the opportunity to be fluent, confident readers who are able to successfully comprehend a wide range of texts. We want pupils to develop a love for reading by having good knowledge of a range of authors and to be able to understand more about the world in which they live through the knowledge they gain from poetry, fiction and non-fiction texts. By the end of their time at Field Junior School, all children should be able to read fluently and confidently in any subject in their forthcoming secondary education.

Implementation:

Reading is a priority at Field Junior school and is taught four times a week. In these lessons, children are given the opportunity to read a text at their level independently and answer comprehension questions, followed by a session, which an adult will model the answers. The other sessions will be

led by the class teacher reading and discussing an age-related text with the children before they answer comprehension question linked to it. The children will be given a range of texts including fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Children mark their own work or peer-mark and the teacher closely monitors their progress throughout the lesson through assessment for learning.

Field Junior children are also encouraged to independently read their own carefully selected reading books in school and at home. Every child has a reading book that is appropriate for their reading age and ability. Every half-term, the children are assessed from the Collins assessment book and twice a year, NFER tests are complete independently, thereby ensuring the children are monitored continuously. The reading scheme is regularly updated to ensure all children have a variety of books to choose from at every level and incorporates both reading scheme books as well as ‘real’ books to ensure children get a wide range of books to choose from.

For those children who are working below age related expectation, we use Project X CODE. CODE X is an innovative reading intervention programme, which combines systematic synthetic phonics, comprehension development, motivational 3D design and gripping stories to accelerate struggling readers’ progress so that children reach expected literacy levels as soon as possible. After every level has been completed, children are assessed to ensure they are ready and able to move to the next band. For pupils who need additional phonics support, Field Junior follow the Twinkl KS2 programme: Codebreakers, which is validated by the DfE and is a Systematic, Synthetic Phonics programme. For children who need a specialist reading programme then Rhino Readers is used, these books correspond with the Codebreaker scheme. Children in year 3 are assessed in their phonics as they start year 3 and are put into groups if they need revision on the phonemes. If there are concerns in any other year groups, children will also be assessed and their gaps will be closed using the Codebreaker scheme. For those children who need to have a more in-depth teaching than revision lessons, we use the Twinkl phonics scheme and the fully decodable texts that accompany the scheme (Rhino Readers), we also use a multi-sensory approach for these children.

Every half term, summative assessments are carried out by the teacher and put on Target Tracker. The children are assessed from the class reading lessons as well as the assessments from Collins/NFER. Assessment for learning is carried out continually in every lesson to ensure that the child is making progress. If a child is working below age-related expectations but has progressed through Code X then they will be invited to attend an after-school reading club lead by an adult who has been trained in reading fluency.

Children are expected to read five times a week at home with an adult and their Link Books are checked on a weekly basis. For those children who find it hard to read at home, adults will hear them read in school and the Reading Ambassadors are also on hand to hear readers and support with any homework from Code X that a child is struggling with.

Reading Scheme

In Field Junior School, we have invested in a variety of new books on our whole school reading scheme, which ensure that the children have a range of genres to choose from in every colour band that they are reading. The bands run from Purple band (level 8) all the way up to Cream (level 18) and in each band, there are fiction, non-fiction and poetry titles. We have just invested in more of the Gold Shimmer band books (level 16). We hope that the children enjoy choosing from these new titles! 

We are delighted to say that Mrs Kenyon has purchased over £2000 worth of books for the reading scheme! The books were carefully chosen for their quality and there is a mixture of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. These new books are ‘real’ books that have been banded at each level of the reading scheme, starting from Lime and the children now have 20 more books to choose from at the level they are on! We hope the children enjoy reading them and that this will help to foster their love of reading even more. 
Please encourage your child to handle these books carefully and to return them when they are finished with them. Happy reading!  Mrs Kenyon
 

Writing

Intent:

At Field Junior, our intention is for our children to write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. Ultimately, we intend our children to develop a love of writing by being able to express their thoughts accurately, confidently and effectively through the written word.

We also believe that all good writers refine and edit their writing, therefore we intend our children to peer-mark to identify their own areas and their partners work for improvement in all pieces of writing.

Implementation:

In order to help us to develop confident, enthusiastic writers who can express themselves in a variety of different styles and within a range of contexts, writing is taught across the curriculum as well as in all daily discrete English lessons. This provides our children with regular opportunities to write effectively for a range of purposes and audiences and writing tasks are therefore specific and meaningful.

Spellings are taught weekly and are addressed throughout the week, term and year according to the rules contained in Appendix 1 of the English National Curriculum. Grammar and punctuation knowledge and skills are taught throughout the English curriculum. Teachers plan to teach the required skills through the genres of writing that they are teaching.

Teachers use assessment for learning on a continual basis throughout the writing lessons and interventions or next steps in marking are carried out to close any gaps. Children are given access to resources that they need for example: phonics mats and displays, dictionaries, writing frames, key words, success criteria; lap-top and working walls to support them with writing. Editing in writing is incredibly important and every child will have a success criteria to work from (these will be adapted where necessary) and children will be expected to work from these – showing where they have used the grammar, the teacher will then mark against the success criteria to ensure that the child understands how to apply the grammar. End of unit pieces will be ticked off by the child and teacher and next steps will be given where necessary. This process ensures that all children are monitored.

Every half term, a book look is carried out by the English lead and teachers use summative assessment to assess their class, this data is collected on to Target Tracker ensuring that progress is monitored.

How you can help at home: 

Listening to your child read is really important, please use the question prompts to help you to ask them questions about the text. Please also sign their Link Book. Please have a look at these videos, which might give you some ideas when you are reading with your child. You will hear children being asked to re-read a sentence if they are not fluent the first time or echo reading after they have had a sentence read to them again, to help with their fluency. You will also see that vocabulary is picked up on and a general discussion of the text is paramount.

Reading for Pleasure is also incredibly important; here is a link to help you get ideas on how you can share and choose a book for your child:

Pupil Voice

Mrs Kenyon has been carrying out some pupil voice for reading with the children and she is pleased to say that their overwhelming response has been positive!

All children spoken to enjoyed their class reader and enjoyed their teacher spending time reading to them. The children enjoyed going to the library every week and hearing recommendations from their class mates on what to read from either the main library or their class library. They talked about reading with their parents at home, who helped them and asked them questions and they told me that they changed their reading book regularly.  

When Mrs Kenyon asked what the children liked about reading the responses were:

Year 6: 

  • Reading is like a dream-when you read, stuff comes into your head.
  • Reading inspires me to write my own stories.

Year 4: 

  • It makes you learn stuff you don’t know. 
  • It gives me a big imagination. 
  • It’s interesting: once I start reading, I wonder what’s going to happen next.