English
At Tudor Grange Primary Academy Perdiswell English is at the heart of our curriculum, pushing children to become articulate communicators and deep thinkers about our world and what it means to be human.
Exposure to and immersion in quality texts helps to develop a shared culture and a life-long love of reading and writing. The focus texts provide all children with an entitled exposure to a range of significant stories, authors, styles and genres. Greater depth and deeper thinking skills are embedded across reading and writing for ALL our children to improve outcomes and drive standards. Distinct types of writing are practised each half term with an emphasis on lexical and grammatical structure.
Reception and Infants are taught to read using Read Write Inc. Phonics teaching and the supporting texts. All classrooms have welcoming book corners with a wide selection of carefully selected age appropriate texts.
Phonics
Ruth Miskin Phonics is a phonics programme that has been designed carefully to help children of all abilities to make rapid progress, as well as allowing us to support you, in fostering a love of reading in your child that will last a lifetime!
At the core of the programme is the lively and vigorous teaching of synthetic phonics. Children learn the 44 common sounds in the English language and how to sound-blend words for reading (decoding) at the same time as developing writing skills and spelling (encoding).
As their confidence in decoding develops they are taught to comprehend and compose ideas for their own writing. The children have the pleasure of reading exciting storybooks perfectly matched to their level – so that they have early success in reading!
The programme begins in the Foundation Stage (Year R) and is expected to extend into KS1. The children follow a structured programme of reading and spelling activities every day and are regularly assessed (every 6-8 weeks) to ensure they are in the right group to meet their needs. All staff at Perdiswell have been fully trained in the delivery of this programme.
The 5 Underlying RWI Principles
1.PACE – no time is wasted during teaching sessions! Children are active and involved in a fun and creative way. Children are reminded to give their teacher their ‘magnet eyes’ and ‘listening ears’!
2.PRAISE – teachers praise the children constantly throughout the teaching sessions. Children learn more quickly when they are praised for what they do well, rather than nagged for what they do wrong. The children are encouraged to praise each other and as a school we have developed several ‘Praise Phrases’ and ‘Praise actions’! Ask your child to demonstrate!
3.PURPOSE – each activity has a very clear purpose. The teacher will set this purpose at the beginning of the lesson, so that the children know exactly what they will be learning.
4.PARTICIPATION – all children take part in all parts of the lesson. Full participation is gained through partner work and choral response.
5. PASSION – as a staff we are passionate about our teaching and the benefits of the Read, Write Inc. programme! We love teaching the sessions and this enthusiasm rubs off onto the children.
Key Documents
Reading
At Tudor Grange Primary Academy Perdiswell, we prioritise the core reading aims of the National Curriculum.
Our children will:
*read easily, fluently and with good understanding
*develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
*appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
From the moment children move off phonics, children have access to a wide range of fiction and non-fiction texts, as well as having the opportunity to dive deeply into poetry. We use whole class Echo-reading to model to children how to read with fluency and expression.
Key Documents
Whole school reading overview (hyperlink to document to follow shortly)
Book Recommendations
Writing
Intent
At Tudor Grange Primary Academy Perdiswell, we are passionate about ensuring every child can write, and sees themselves as a writer. We strive to ensure that high-quality education in English will teach pupils to speak and write fluently, so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others, and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them. Our aim is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word. We want every child to acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar, and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing, and spoken language, in a creative, diverse, and purposeful way. We want all pupils to be able to write clearly, accurately, and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes, and audiences. We support students to progressively improve their transcription and composition skills, and from this to plan, revise, and evaluate their writing.
Implementation
To enable our children to write effectively, and with clarity, we teach writing using “The Write Stuff,” by Jane Considine. We understand that this is a schema, and not a scheme: an effective way to make the complex cognitive load required to write well simple, sticky, and explicit. This approach is being implemented from EYFS to Y6 from September 2023, to allow children to build the substantive and disciplinary knowledge required over time to write effective sentences, with the grammar and vocabulary required explicitly modelled, to lead to confident independent writing. Over time, children will write a broad range of fiction and non-fiction texts, from a variety of themes and inspirations.
‘The Write Stuff’ brings clarity to the mechanics of teaching writing. It is introduced through the ‘Writing Rainbow’, using the three zones of writing. These three essential components consist of: the FANTASTICs (Ideas); the GRAMMARISRICS (Tools); the BOOMTASTICs (Techniques).
From ‘The Writing Rainbow’, symbols are used to support children within their writing journey and to ensure that all children can use them in context as they move through school.
In addition to ‘The Writing Rainbow’, ‘The Writing Laundry’ is a tool used to support children with editing their writing. The idea behind the laundry is that children do not forget the key components of building a sentence.
Impact
Although ‘The Write Stuff’ is newly implemented, we are already seeing a difference in our children’s confidence to write. Children are engaged with writing and feel well supported through using a small steps approach to writing. Children are beginning to become confident editors of writing, using ‘The Writing Laundry’ to support them with this.
“I loved the writing lesson so much; I didn’t want it to end!” – Year 6 Pupil