For Pupils
English
At Mattishall Primary School, we want our pupils to become confident readers, writers and speakers.
Reading is at the heart of our curriculum; our intention is to develop skilled readers who are able to access knowledge and understanding across all subjects. We encourage and support children to develop a love of reading for enjoyment, to explore a wide range of authors/genres and to use ambitious vocabulary in their written work and speech. We would like our pupils to be enthusiastic, lively and writers with a strong understanding of the techniques used to write with expertise. We believe that the exploration of high-quality children’s literature is vital in providing a rich, diverse literary experience and in developing a strong reading culture within our school.
We aim for children to:
- read fluently, with confidence and good understanding
- read widely and often for pleasure and to enhance knowledge of the world
- experience diversity through literature
- acquire a wide vocabulary and a strong understanding of grammar conventions for writing and speaking
- write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
- feel confident to participate in discussion and debate; to be able to articulate and elaborate on their understanding and ideas
These aims are embedded in our English lessons and the wider curriculum. We strive to provide targeted support as children follow a clear pathway of progression through school, in order to ensure that all children experience success.
Writing
At Mattishall, we have implemented The Literacy Tree writing curriculum.
We aim for children’s writing opportunities to be meaningful and to feel authentic, ensuring that the audience and purpose is clear. Books offer this opportunity: our aim is that that children have real reasons to write, whether to explain, persuade, inform or instruct. Writing in role using a range of genres is key to our approach.
Through use of The Literary Curriculum we ensure coverage of the entire English Programme of Study for KS1 and KS2 for Writing, as well as meeting the needs of the statutory 2021 Early Years Framework. In many cases objectives are covered more than once and children have opportunities to apply these several times over the course of a year, as well as to consolidate prior knowledge from previous years. Teachers regularly model writing to demonstrate tone and levels of formality. Where necessary, planning sequences are adapted by teachers to ensure that our children are appropriately supported. They are based on a wide range of high quality and significant children's literature chosen to engage, challenge and support children to be critical readers and confident and informed writers.
Long Term Plan
Reading
We are a Read Write Inc school. Read Write Inc is the UK’s leading synthetic phonics programme, for children from Reception onwards, and for children with SEND in older year groups. Our Phonics Leader provides coaching for Reading Teachers and ensures fidelity to the Read Write Inc programme. This ensures that the teaching of reading and writing is rigorous and consistent.
Read Write Inc supports children to climb higher rungs of the fluency ladder. This is achieved by accelerating reading accuracy and developing comprehension. Read Write Inc. Phonics provides children of all ages with the skills and knowledge they need to read and spell.
Children are taught in groups and sometimes individually following Fast track Tutoring. This breaks down Read Write Inc. Phonics into small, incremental steps to help pupils who need extra support.
Although children are taught in small cumulative steps, lessons are well-paced, engaging and motivating. Children are taught new sounds each week, but importantly review previous sounds and words until they can read them confidently – and in closely matched decodable texts.
Assessment matches these steps, so progress can be recognised and celebrated. The children:
- Learn 44 sounds and the corresponding letters/letter groups using simple picture prompts Parent video: How to say the sounds - YouTube
- Learn to read words using Fred talk and sound blending
- Read from a range of storybooks and non-fictions books matched to their phonic knowledge
- Learn how to work well with partners
- Develop comprehension skills in stories by answering ‘Find It’ and ‘Prove It’ discussion questions
- Learn to write and form the letters/letter groups, which represent the 44 sounds with the help of fun phrases
- Learn to write words by using Fred Talk
- Learn to build sentences by practising sentences out loud before they write
The children also have copies of the book they are reading in class, to take home to practice fluency, and a book bag book matched to their phonic knowledge level to take home to share.
After completing the Read Write Inc Phonics programme, our children progress through Reading for Understanding groups, during which teachers use short extracts from a wide range of fiction and non- fiction texts for deep discussion of vocabulary and meaning, developing children’s inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval, sequencing and summary skills.
At Mattishall, we are passionate about encouraging our children to read widely for pleasure. Teachers read to children daily and we continue to develop class libraries of exciting, carefully chosen and age- appropriate reading books. We love celebrating events such as World Book Day and visiting our Library Bus.