STAVELEY JUNIOR SCHOOL
English
At Staveley Junior School, reading lies at the heart of the curriculum.
Our aim is that all children become fluent, habitual readers who read for purpose and pleasure.
Being able to read well matters, it significantly impacts on success in school and beyond. All children across school are explicitly taught the skills of reading through a mix of reading activities: Reading comprehension, individual reading, reciprocal reading and guided reading.
Sessions will aim to develop the key reading skills comprising of vocabulary, inference, prediction, explain, sequence / summarise. Children complete reading activities every day, both as discrete reading sessions and also, planned reading activities across the curriculum. Children encounter a range of text genres during reading sessions, including a mix of both fiction and non-fiction. Every class in school has a class text that is read to them regularly. Texts are chosen from a diverse selection of recommended reads. We know that reading can give children access to experiences that they can identify with and also experiences different to their own. Reading to children regularly ensures that we continue to develop their vocabulary and understanding of characters beyond their reading level. It also aims to harbour a love of reading, which we really want to cherish.
Children are encouraged to read at home and are able to take home books from their reading stage from the school library.
To supplement the texts available to children, we also subscribe to an online reading platform called bug club.
As well as accessing texts, children are also provided with questions linked to the text. These range from multiple choice questions to longer, inference style questions requiring a written response.
Children are awarded house points as a reward for reading at home and this is recorded in their planner.
Writing
We use the National Curriculum in England as the basis for implementing the statutory requirements of the programmes of study for English.
We aim to develop a love of writing through purposeful and engaging stimuli. Children receive daily lessons to teach the composition, punctuation and grammar requirements. Writing lessons are often driven by a high quality text and follow a 2 year cycle, ensuring the delivery of the statutory requirements for LKS2 by the end of Year 4 and UKS2 by the end of Year 6. Grammar objectives also link with the writing focus for each genre being studied.
Cross-curricular opportunities for writing are provided whenever possible and extended pieces of writing are often linked to our termly learning challenge. We structure our writing sessions to allow children to build upon prior learning and allow time to practice writing skills in small steps before applying them within a writing task.
Phonics
Discrete phonics teaching is offered for those children who still need it at the start of KS2. We follow Phonics Shed and aim to work on the phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (written sounds) still needed.
All classes have a phonic element within their weekly spelling sessions which link to the RWI spelling scheme and we will continue to use the terminology of phonemes, graphemes, dots and dashes.
Handwriting
Teachers have high expectations in the presentation of work in all areas and as such, cursive handwriting is taught discretely in all classes In addition to this, targeted children receive Handwriting intervention. Handwriting is linked to spellings whenever possible. Once children can join consistently and have a consistent style, they are awarded a handwriting pen licence. Pens can be used in all school books with the exception of Mathematics.
See our handwriting policy for more information
Spelling
Spellings are taught in addition to the English lesson using SpellingShed. Children focus on a spelling rule/pattern each week and complete activities on their iPads. Children have a weekly spelling test as well as weekly spelling homework. Spelling interventions are also in place for children with additional learning needs as well as the use of electronic dictionaries and Siri where appropriate. At the end of Year 6, children undertake a spellings test as part of their Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar SAT.
