Writing & Reading

Barley Hill Primary School English Intent

At Barley Hill Primary School, it is our intention for every child to acquire necessary knowledge, skills and understanding to become lifelong learners and linguists - to write confidently in a range of genres, have a love for reading and speak clearly and confidently. 

We make sure our Curriculum develops a well-rounded reader and writer by basing our syllabus around six quality texts within each year group which progress throughout the school.  These texts are chosen for their quality vocabulary, depth of text and appreciation of different cultures which enable the children to be exposed to a range of books that they may not have chosen to read independently. 

A storytelling approach supports the children to be able to use new vocabulary introduced within their speaking which allows the children to become more confident with using ambitious vocabulary in their writing to support the engagement of the reader.

The National Curriculum supports a skills progression within each year.

 We believe that all children deserve to attain a high standard of English. Children are explicitly taught the skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening.   English lessons are timetabled each day throughout Key Stages 1 and 2 with skills being transferred to all other areas of the curriculum. We want to develop a passion for reading so books and stories are made the centre of everything we do.  Children will be read to regularly from a range of texts and will practise their own reading skills daily too.  Our impressive library is used regularly throughout the week to encourage a love and passion for reading. 

Reading

Reading is taught through discreet Reading lessons through the week that teach fluency of reading alongside teaching specific skills such as predicting, clarifying vocabulary, inference, summarising, comparing, structure & organisation and language choice that progresses through Years 1-6. We follow the Pathways to Read scheme which gives children exposure to a variety of book genres, themes and diversity through their learning journey. Below you can see the overview of texts used. Please note that some texts have moved around within year groups at times to help link with wider curriculum subject links.

See below for the progression of reading skills for Year 1 - Year 6.

Outside of Reading lessons, there are plenty of books in all of the children's classrooms for them to choose from, plus many opportunities to visit Thame library and our school library to select books that they enjoy reading. Teachers also have dedicated reading times each day with the class which maybe the book they are studying or another book with many opportunities for reading for pleasure included.

Writing

Writing is promoted as a thinking tool, not just as a medium for sharing information. Children are encouraged to write at length across a range of subjects and text types.  Children will write for a purpose within their English sessions and all the children will have the opportunity to have their writing 'published' in some way, for example in a class book, a competition, on a display or with parents invited to have a look. Children write using a cursive script, which supports the fluency of their writing.  They begin to learn this script in Early Years. The school follows a three stage approach to writing over 3 weeks that builds children's skills to be able to write their published piece.

IMMERSION --- SKILLS --- INNOVATION

Immersion (1 Week) - This is where children immerse themselves into the topic they are writing about, gaining key information about the text type and genre e.g. this may be delving into a historical or scientific topic they will basing their writing on. It may also be going into a reading book which their writing will be based on. Immersion also encompasses many hands on physical approaches such as role-play and drama to bring the topic and characters to life.

Skills (1 Week) - This is where children begin to learn the specific SPaG skills to be used within their writing, becoming masters of integrating these effectively within their writing.

Innovation (1 Week) - This is where children build up to their published piece, looking at variety of high-quality examples, identifying features, class writes and more before moving on to independent writing whilst on-going self and peer assessment happens to help up-level work.

All of this work is gathered as a class full of ideas, vocabulary and technical skills to help them lean on as they go into their own independent writing.

See below for the long-term progression of text types and writing outcomes for EYFS-Year 6.

Phonics

Phonics is taught  within Early Years and KS1 daily, following Sounds Write. Further information about this can be found on the Phonics page of our school website.  Children will learn how to blend and segment sounds for reading and spelling and how to manipulate phonemes to spot patterns within spellings.  This approach will follow the children throughout the school to help with more complex reading and spelling words.  There are videos on the Phonics page to explain this in more detail. 

In Year 1 the children have to complete the statutory Year 1 phonics screening check. This is a short, light-touch assessment to confirm whether individual children have learnt phonic decoding to an appropriate standard. It will identify the children who need extra help so they are given support by the school to improve their reading skills. They will then be able to retake the check so that we can track pupils until they are able to decode.

See below for the Sounds-Write units sequence of sounds, spellings and skills.