English

Reading 

‘Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.’ 

-Richard Steele 

Local Context:

At Long Lane Primary School, we believe that reading is a key skill that is woven through our English curriculum, using cross-curricular links. Through our diverse reading spine, we instil a ‘love for reading’ through deepening the pupils’ knowledge, skills and thinking.  The reading community is at the heart of our curriculum at Long Lane. We strive to create a culture of life-long learning and discovery that is stimulating and enjoyable for both children and staff through a love of books and reading. To achieve this, we work together expertly and enthusiastically to deliver our curriculum in a safe, caring and positive environment.

(Please see Curriculum Policy.docx for details of Cultural Capital at Long Lane)

Intent

At Long Lane Primary School, we are committed to putting reading at the heart of our curriculum and want our pupils to leave Long Lane with a lifelong love of reading. We believe that reading is a vital skill that enables our children to further their resilience and learning across the wider curriculum, creating the fundamental basis for future success.

Our reading curriculum aims to:

• Give children the skills and strategies to be independent readers, starting with phonic skills for our emergent readers.
• Instil confidence to be aspirational with reading choices and the development of ambitious vocabulary.
• Opportunities to develop fluency and effective oracy skills through reading aloud.
• Provoke curiosity through a diverse range of high-quality texts that engage and motivate giving access for all and exposure to cultural capital.
• Encourage resilience through repeated practice of appropriately pitched comprehension aligned with their reading age and ambitious vocabulary.
• Access to opportunities in the wider community and enjoyment of reading at home and the wider environment.

Our intent is for all children to have a sound phonological awareness, and to be able to read with fluency as they enter KS2. We believe our carefully planned curriculum allows the children to use reading as a tool to widen their knowledge and for pleasure.  We foster a successful home-school partnership, which enables parents and carers to understand how to enhance the skills taught in school and to strengthen their child’s appreciation and love of books.

By the end of their primary education, our intent is that all pupils are enthusiastic, habitual readers, allowing them to be successful in any subject in their forthcoming education and understanding of the world around them.

Implementation

At Long Lane, the children’s reading development starts with Phonics. We follow the Read, Write, Inc phonics scheme which is a synthetic phonics programme taught to children in Early Years, KS1 and older children as appropriate. Children learn the 44 common sounds in the English language and how to blend them to read words and segment them to spell words. 

The daily Read Write Inc. phonics lessons integrate reading, writing, thinking, and spoken language in a variety of activities, to ensure the daily development of children’s comprehension and wider literacy skills. Phonics is assessed regularly to ensure that teaching is targeted, and groupings reflect this. The RWI phonics scheme is supported by RWI books alongside our phonetically decodable books aligned with the sounds that pupils can decode. These phonics books are predominately used in Foundation Stage and Key Stage One.  We provide opportunities for our pupils to read in the school day through whole class reading, partner reading, reading interventions and 1:1 reading. The aim is to improve their fluency, expression and intonation whilst assessing their understanding of the text.

Once our pupils have developed a combination of phonological awareness and reading fluency, they are offered books from our Accelerated Reader Scheme. The Accelerated Reader scheme offers a range of high-quality texts from different authors, cultures and genres. The children’s reading age is assessed regularly and aligned with appropriate books that support their reading level. Once the pupil has completed an Accelerated Reader book, they are encouraged to complete an online quiz to assess their comprehension of the text. This allows pupils to independently demonstrate their understanding of a text.

The reading culture at Long Lane is underpinned by the positive partnerships between pupils, parents and staff. We provide all children with an individual reading record book which they take home daily, accompanied with reading books from school matched with their reading ability. The children are encouraged to change their books regularly from our wide range of high quality, diverse and suitably challenging texts. The pupils are expected to read regularly at home, and this is monitored and positively acknowledged using their reading record. This record is a useful tool to liaise and communicate with parents and carers about their child’s reading. Reading workshops, phonics evenings and ‘stay and read’ sessions are run throughout the year and ensure that families are a valued part of our reading community. Alongside this, we have regular author visits, celebrate and promote world book day and have some reading incentives bespoke to each class.  Our Reading ambassadors in Year 6 both promote and support reading in the younger years, using a skilled session of reading with KS1 pupils.  They also support reading in the outdoor learning areas.

At Long Lane, English lessons are taught in units which are carefully planned in conjunction with class teachers and subject leaders to ensure they are conducive to high quality learning experiences. Our reading spine reflects the local context of the school whilst also exposing the children to the wider world setting, ensuring diverse representation and concepts. Across the school, teachers ensure classrooms contain displays and literacy-rich reading environments which are essential to the promotion and teaching of reading. Within each classroom, the book corners are resourced with high-quality, enriching and age-appropriate texts which the children have access to throughout the day when reading for pleasure. All pupils have access to the school library, where they are encouraged to choose texts of their own interest and share with their friends and family at home.  Each class also has daily whole class story time, where class teachers strategically share a range of challenging and thought-provoking texts, ensuring diversity and representation, with the children.

One of the ways that reading is explicitly taught at Long Lane is through whole class reading fluency lessons. This is comprised of nine steps which enhance the children’s skills of reading fluency, developing an expressive voice and reading punctuation accurately, thus giving pupils the opportunities to present, perform and read aloud. 

Alongside reading fluency, the children are taught specific strategies to help with reading comprehension. These strategies can be taught in a discrete session or within the English lesson using key texts from our Reading Spine. The comprehension strategies are modelled and practised to ensure that they become embedded and fluent. Opportunities to model these strategies are taken throughout the school day across all subjects. 

Teachers draw on strategies known as “VIPERS” (Literacy Shed) or “Reading Dogs” (Twinkl) ensuring that they are using consistent language.

At Long Lane, we believe in early identification and response to intervention, so children’s reading ability is regularly assessed through either phonics or our accelerated reader programme and additional summative assessment. This indicates to teachers which children must be targeted for additional reading intervention which is planned through our Class Needs Analysis provision document. This is achieved through 1:1 reading, established reading interventions, ABC to read programme and reading ambassadors.

We believe with a combination of the strategies listed above allow our pupils to be equipped for the next stage of their reading journey and beyond. 

Impact

The impact on our children at Long Lane is clear: transferable skills, progress in their reading ability and life-long learning opportunities. Through our carefully devised reading curriculum at Long Lane, our children become increasingly more confident readers and quickly understand the value of reading in supporting all aspects of their learning journey.  

To ensure pupils in EYFS and Key Stage One are making progress, their phonics knowledge is assessed every half term using the RWI scheme. Pupils who are not making sufficient progress or have identified misconceptions or gaps, are identified quickly and supported using the RWI 1-1 phonics intervention. Regular phonics assessments also ensure that pupils are grouped accordingly. The statutory Phonics Screening Check takes place at the end of Year 1, and any pupils who do not meet the expected standard can continue with phonics support beyond Year 1 and are re-tested in Year 2. 

(Please see Teaching for Learning Policy 2023.docx for details of Learning Behaviours, Inclusion and Rosenshine Principles at Long Lane)

Pupil Assessment and Attainment

We ensure that there are regular reading assessments carried out through the year to ensure the children’s reading ability is aligned with their book level. As well as statutory assessments at the end of Key stage 2, STAR reading assessments take place every half term, alongside PIRA testing (Years 2 – 6) which measures attainment against a national standardised score. This reading data is used in teacher’s termly pupil progress meetings alongside our Class Needs Analysis which measure pupil progress as well as compare attainment nationally and set suitable targets and tailored support for each year group and each individual.

Teachers use Assessment for Learning strategies to ensure that children understand what they are being taught within a context and ‘know more and remember more’ of the key knowledge and skills outlined in each objective. These will include; mini quizzes, questioning, discussions and observations (including video and photography), peer assessment and appreciation, Think Pair Share, book looks and comparisons. Teacher assessment occurs throughout teaching and learning with support implemented where appropriate. (see Teaching for Learning Policy linked below)

EYFS pupils' progress and attainment is assessed by the FS class teacher in the context of the EYFS framework and ELGs.

Monitoring and School Improvement Planning

The English Core Team, the Head Teacher, and the Governors regularly review and quality assure Reading across the school to ensure that it is implemented sufficiently well in line with the National Curriculum Objectives and aligns with the Vision and Values of the school. 

Impact is measured through monitoring activities, including; learning walks, questionnaires to staff, pupil voice, looking at evidence of pupil’s work, teacher assessments and any other relevant evidence.   In addition, they evaluate the impact and plans for future development of the subject for pupils and staff, utilising action plans, looking to develop new opportunities, refine current practice, plan CPD for staff and feed into the School Improvement Plan (where appropriate) from where Performance Management and school priorities stem.

Linked Policies – This policy sits under the following two umbrella policies;

Teaching for Learning Policy 2023.docx

Curriculum Policy.docx

‘Writing is the painting of the voice’

-Voltaire

Local Context:

At Long Lane Primary School, we believe that writing is a key skill that is woven through our entire curriculum, using cross-curricular links. Through our ability to engage pupils in diverse and exciting opportunities that are linked to real life contexts and current affairs (inspired through our Reading Spine), pupils see their writing come to life and have meaning.  We strive to create a culture where children are proficient and resilient writers who are self-motivated to revise, edit and publish their own work with a clear understanding of the process needed to be a writer. To achieve this, we work together expertly and enthusiastically to deliver our curriculum in a safe, caring and positive environment.

(Please see Curriculum Policy.docx for details of Cultural Capital at Long Lane)

Intent

At Long Lane Primary School, we believe that exposing our learners to high quality literature is the driver in allowing them to be inspired in their writing. We believe that a secure base in oracy skills is paramount to developing competent writers. Through creating a safe and inclusive environment where there are opportunities for our pupils to share and discuss texts with curiosity, this enables our learners to be articulate in speaking and listening skills. Through our carefully devised English curriculum and writing process, children follow a clear pathway of progression as they advance through the school. We want children to acquire a sound knowledge base of grammar and punctuation skills, spelling strategies, a wide vocabulary and to develop their proficiency in creative writing, thus becoming effective oral and written communicators. Our overarching aim is to inspire and motivate our learners through immersive writing opportunities that build upon previous teaching, alongside regular assessment to ensure individual’s needs are met, creating independent and resilient writers.

Implementation

Early Years - Our children’s writing journey starts when they join Long Lane Primary in Foundation Stage. Daily opportunities for mark making and developing fine motor skills are evident within our continuous provision. Activities such as dough disco and fine motor interventions are carried out in Rainbows and continue into Year 1, to strengthen their hand muscles to prepare the children for writing. There is a heavy emphasis on speaking and listening opportunities within the Foundation Stage, as these are the building blocks for becoming confident writers. Rich texts from our school reading spine are used in teaching and planning, with regular opportunities for pupils to become story tellers and share stories in a variety of ways. Alongside our reading spine, the RWI phonics programme is used in Foundation Stage to teach letter formation, grapheme-phoneme correspondence, key word recognition, segmenting for spelling, basic sentence structure and reading comprehension skills. 

As a school, we have adopted the RWI phonics and spelling programme. All children at Long Lane are taught how to accurately form letters during their phonics lessons following the RWI letter patter. Once they are secure in their letter formation, they are then taught how to write simple words, phrases and sentences. In Year 1, these core skills are built on to ensure that our learners leave Year 1 with being able to demarcate sentences with capital letters, full stops and finger spaces that can be deciphered by themselves and others. The writing process is then adopted from the spring term in Year 1 and continues throughout the rest of their schooling.

Throughout the rest of the school, the writing process is heavily supported through our whole school English overview which lists each year group’s key texts and writing opportunities, which encompass a variety of genres. Through repeated practice of writing genres, this ensures that children are uplevelling their writing and weaving in new grammar skills as they progress through the school allowing our learners to be capable of writing for different audiences and purposes. Writing is a key focus in our wider curriculum, providing opportunities to transfer and build upon their knowledge taught in English lessons.

We follow a prescriptive writing process from Y1-Y6, which builds on the skills developed in Foundation Stage. Through following this process, we create a ‘shared language’ across the school so that the children learn one technique and retain the information.

The Writing Process

 
Our teachers’ planning is informed by the five-stage writing process, which follows the ‘Gradual Release Model’ of I do (modelled instruction), we do (shared instruction), you do (guided practice), you do it alone (independent practice).

1: Familiarisation

The process starts with familiarising the children with the text type and genre. This consists of exposing the children to a selection of high-quality texts of a specific genre with clear examples of the features of this text.

2: Capturing ideas and Oral rehearsal

During this stage, children will share their ideas through a range of strategies and vocabulary will be built upon. this is achieved through orally retelling the text, capturing the children’s attention through memorable techniques and games and through ensuring deepening subject knowledge.

3: Teacher Demonstration

Teachers write a WAGOLL (What a good one looks like) and share it with the children. Teachers model the process of writing within every English unit so that children understand the thought process behind writing. During this process, teachers think out loud, edit and demonstrate how and why they have structured their writing in the way that they have. They unpick their text example with the children, asking the children what makes it a good text, depicting the key features and consolidating their grammatical understanding. 

4: Teacher Scribing

This is a collaborative process, achieved through generating ideas as a class and the teacher recording them, to inform a shared write, which is where the teacher guides the writing, and the children contribute their ideas to the text.

5: Independent Writing

Once the children are equipped with all of the aforementioned skills, they are asked to produce an independent piece of writing based on the text type studied. The outcome for each child will be individualised and appropriate scaffolding, such as writing frames may be used to support some learners. The children will publish their writing, and this will then go on display. This includes the children making their own version of a text type, such as an encyclopaedia, which will then go in their class book corner to be celebrated with their peers.

Editing- throughout each stage

At Long Lane, the children are taught to use their green ‘polishing pens’ from Year 1 upwards. As this skill is taught early on in their journey at Long Lane, the children are given the opportunity to evaluate their own progress, which often drives their enthusiasm to reach new targets and self-identify their next steps in their learning. The children are taught to self and peer mark their work. As they progress through the school, they are taught to use their polishing pens to edit their work for punctuation, vocabulary and uplevelling. This is supported by our bespoke editing grids for each year group. The children are given success ladders and checklists to ensure they have included key features of the text taught and add additional information if they have missed any features out.

When marking children’s work, all staff ensure that they are using the same codes in the books, as seen in our Teaching for Learning Policy so that the children have a clear understanding as they progress through the school. We mainly use ‘live marking’ with our children, as we feel this allows the children to have quality 1:1 feedback with their class teacher, so they can understand their misconceptions and edit their work accordingly.

From the offset, we meticulously identify children who require additional support and intervention and plan effective, tailored provision to support emerging needs. Support staff are trained in several bespoke interventions, designed to raise attainment. We have several reading volunteers, including working in close partnership with ABC to Read, who also visit our school and hear targeted children read. Children on the SEND register and with SAPS have additional targeted interventions which are bespoke to their needs, carried out by our Teachers and TAs. Quality first teaching is used to ensure that individual learning needs are met. Class Teachers work in close partnership with each other to support any learners working below age related expectations. Through this approach, we ensure that each child can be successful and reach their potential, whilst equipping them with tools to become independent, life-long learners.

We value our home-school partnership and believe this relationship is integral in raising standards in English. Throughout the year, we offer: Reading Workshops, Phonics Workshops, Stay and Read Sessions, Welcome Time Sessions and Reading Breakfast sessions to support parents in understanding how concepts are taught and how we can further support them with their child’s learning at home, providing a safe space for parents to share any concerns in these aspects of learning with staff.

Spelling

At Long Lane, we utilise the RWI Spelling Programme from Year 2 to Year 6 which builds upon their prior knowledge of the RWI phonics programme. Each class has a discrete spelling lesson daily. This programme enables us to meet the spelling expectations of the National Curriculum, raise standards in spelling and provide consistency and progression in the teaching of spelling across the school.

RWI Spelling is an interactive programme which teaches spellings in a fun and engaging way. Each unit is introduced with a short video. It helps children to learn spellings with common patterns and uses rules in order to help the children recall spellings as well as teaching exceptions to these rules.

As the programme builds upon their existing phonics knowledge, children are already proficient at using dots (for individual sounds) and dashes (for digraphs) and prefixes and suffixes can be added to root words to help them to spell with greater accuracy, understanding and confidence.  Logbooks give children ownership of their spellings and further consolidation at home. It also allows teachers to track the progress of individuals or groups of children and tailor the content of spelling sessions to suit their needs.

Handwriting

As a school, we follow the Nelson Thorne Handwriting scheme from Reception to Year 6. The scheme introduces cursive handwriting in step-by-step stages in line with the National Curriculum and supports in developing the children’s personal handwriting style to support them in meeting the ‘expected standard’ in the end of key stage writing teacher assessments. Each class have regular handwriting lessons every week, with some children having bespoke interventions in handwriting. In Foundation Stage, the children are taught print letter formation, with the expectation that by the end of the year they can mostly write recognisable letters. In Year 1, the children gradually learn cursive letters and by the end of Year 2, all children are taught how to join their writing. By the end of Year 6, the expectation is that the children write fluently, legibly and with increasing speed, recognising which letters to join and to not join.

(Please see Teaching for Learning Policy 2023.docx for details of Learning Behaviours, Inclusion and Rosenshine Principles at Long Lane)

Impact

Through our engaging English Curriculum at Long Lane, children are enthusiastic and inspired to write. They enjoy publishing their final pieces of writing and sharing their work with staff and peers alike. As English is at the heart of the curriculum, we ensure that there are several cross-curricular writing opportunities to allow for skills taught explicitly in English lessons to be transferred into other subjects, allowing for a deeper understanding of grammar concepts and consolidation of writing different text types.

The impact of our diverse and engaging curriculum is supported and identified using a range of assessment measures, including:

• RWI half-termly phonics assessments are carried out to determine an individual’s phonetic knowledge and their ability to apply this when segmenting and blending a word.
• RWI Spelling Assessments.
• Self and Peer Assessments.
• Regular 'opportunities for independent writing, which are teacher assessed using our Local Authority Writing Grids.
• Internal writing moderation.
• External writing moderation.
• Pupil voice.
• Pupil progress meetings.
• Regular learning walks, of which we have received highly complementary feedback from parents and governors. 

Pupil Assessment and Attainment

From conducting these regular assessments, we are able to adapt and reflect on our planning and opportunities given for the children to ensure that all needs of our children are met.  This Writing data is used in teacher’s termly pupil progress meetings alongside our Class Needs Analysis which measure pupil progress as well as compare attainment nationally and set suitable targets and tailored support for each year group and each individual.  

Teachers use Assessment for Learning strategies to ensure that children understand what they are being taught within a context and ‘know more and remember more’ of the key knowledge and skills outlined in each objective. These will include; mini quizzes, questioning, discussions and observations (including video and photography), peer assessment and appreciation, Think Pair Share, book looks and comparisons. Teacher assessment occurs throughout teaching and learning with support implemented where appropriate. (see Teaching for Learning Policy linked below)

EYFS pupils' progress and attainment is assessed by the FS class teacher in the context of the EYFS framework and ELGs.

Monitoring and School Improvement Planning

The English Core Team, the Head Teacher, and the Governors regularly review and quality assure writing across the school to ensure that it is implemented sufficiently well in line with the National Curriculum Objectives and aligns with the Vision and Values of the school. 

Impact is measured through monitoring activities, including; learning walks, questionnaires to staff, pupil voice, looking at evidence of pupil’s work, teacher assessments and any other relevant evidence, writing moderation with the Local Authority and other local schools.  In addition, they evaluate the impact and plans for future development of the subject for pupils and staff, utilising action plans, looking to develop new opportunities, refine current practice, plan CPD for staff and feed into the School Improvement Plan (where appropriate) from where Performance Management and school priorities stem.

Linked Policies – This policy sits under the following two umbrella policies;

Teaching for Learning Policy 2023.docx

Curriculum Policy.docx