Field End Junior School

Intent

Our aim is for all children to become mastery learners, confident orators, active learners and life long readers.

At Field End Junior School, the skills of English underpin our children's journeys as they navigate their way through their Key Stage 2 education and further develop into articulate and confident members of today’s society. As quoted by the English National Curriculum 2014, ‘All the skills of language are essential to participating fully as a member of society; pupils therefore, who do not learn to speak, read and write fluently and confidently are effectively disenfranchised.’  We firmly believe that a high-quality education in English will enable our children to develop into Mastery learners with fluency and accuracy within their communicative skills and confidence and motivation in speaking, listening, writing and reading. We are committed to providing an English curriculum that is engaging and purposeful and paves the way for our young people to achieve personal academic excellence.

Reading

As reading is integral to a child’s understanding and appreciation of the world around them; a platform that allows a child to see beyond what they know, share experiences and develop the vocabulary they need to effectively express themselves, we are committed in our ambition for each child to become a Lifelong Reader who is constantly learning new things with each turn of the page. Our reading curriculum enables the explicit teaching of reading skills and domains as a priority throughout the school and is supported by a culture and environment of reading for pleasure and information, thus developing the habit of reading widely and often and fostering a lifelong love and enjoyment of books. Our curriculum is delivered through a linked approach to shared and guided reading, reading across the curriculum to promote disciplinary reading, reading engagement at home and opportunities to read both independently and hear quality texts read aloud. All of these essential components offer the range of opportunities needed to develop our children into fluent, enthusiastic and critical readers.

Writing

We fully encourage our children to develop a love of writing and teach explicit and contextual skills needed in order to become confident and independent writers. Children are provided with engaging, purposeful opportunities for writing through immersion in high-quality texts chosen as whole class readers and those that are closely linked to topics studied. The planning and teaching of writing are not only designed to motivate our children but also to support their development as active learners who are motivated, independent and make cross curricular connections academically across genres and text types.  The writing curriculum is designed to enable the teaching of explicit key writing skills both systematically and within a context so that ideas in all cross-curricular writing can be successfully communicated and pupils can adapt their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences as they develop their mastery in writing. Alongside writing, high expectations are placed on handwriting and presentation as we encourage the children’ self-pride in their work. Handwriting is practised throughout the school, with more bespoke support where appropriate, with the aim of increasing the fluency and speed with which pupils are able to write down what they want to communicate.

Spoken Language

The National Curriculum for English reflects the importance of spoken language in children's development across the whole curriculum – cognitively, socially and linguistically. At Field End Junior School, we recognise that the language children hear, speak and are exposed to are vital for developing their vocabulary, grammar and oracy skills. The ability to speak eloquently, articulate ideas and thoughts, influence through talking, collaborate with peers and have confidence to express views are vital skills that we recognise support success in learning. Through purposeful talk, role play, drama, collaboration, discussion and debate across the curriculum, pupils are supported to become confident orators who can think, learn, reason, explore, communicate, create and influence, and are encouraged to use relevant, structured and coherent spoken language through the development of strong oracy skills as they move through key stage 2.

Implementation

Reading

The reading journey that our children embark on is wide and varied. Through shared and guided reading, in line with the school’s weekly model, children are immersed in high quality texts whilst developing and rehearsing the explicit skills domains of reading. Texts are chosen carefully to provide the children with a wealth of vocabulary and opportunities to develop fluency and comprehension whilst fostering a love of reading and discovering the pleasure of the written word. Both the Power or Reading and Opening Doors materials are used to structure and support cohesive and progressive planning which guide and tempt our children through a text. Inference, deduction and comprehension skills are developed through these high quality and challenging texts and are available to all learners.

The engagement between home and school reading is a relationship that fosters a holistic approach to reading. Children’s reading books are matched to their current reading attainment, following regular reading and comprehension age assessments and are shared both in school and at home. Reading diaries are used by the children and parents to celebrate their reading experiences at home. Children also have access to the school library bus and the classroom reading areas and select books of their own choice to read alongside their reading books thus developing further their reading for pleasure.

In order to support and consolidate children’s decoding in reading, Read Write Inc materials, including Fresh Start in Upper Key Stage two, are utilised to support readers who have demonstrated that they would benefit from further phonics development and home reading books have been matched to compliment, rehearse and practise current phonetic areas of development.

As well as ongoing formative teacher assessment of reading, summative assessment generated through the use of Pixl reading assessments allows for bespoke areas of development in terms of comprehension domains to be highlighted and this in turn informs whole class or small group tailored planning as required.

Writing

The high quality and challenging texts explored to support our reading curriculum naturally translate into our writing curriculum and support our active learning through the opportunities to make connections across both reading and writing. We firmly believe that reading and writing are inextricably linked, therefore studying a text in both reading and writing sessions encourages children to make links and become empathetic, motivated and ambitious writers. Our Long-term plan for writing ensures a variety of genres or text types are explored across Key Stage two and bi-weekly unit plans, linked to all the text types and genres, ensure children have the opportunity to refer to previous learning and apply concepts and skills to new writing opportunities. Through this approach, prior learning is built upon, skills are progressively taught both through the year and across the key stage and National Curriculum objectives are taught. As previously stated above, The Power of Reading and Opening Doors materials support our children to develop their written word through immersion and experimentation of vocabulary, grammar and writing for purpose. Planning incorporates time for children to learn and acquire the skills to plan, draft and refine their written work over time and to develop independence in being able to identify their own areas for improvement in all pieces of writing.

Across the school, children are encouraged to demonstrate the cursive script style of handwriting across the school. Handwriting, including the correct letter formation and joining techniques are taught and modelled by staff when writing in the children’s books or as part of a modelled or shared write.

The school’s use of ‘Spelling Shed’ ensures that the full range of spellings, in line with the National Curriculum, are taught. Weekly spellings and spelling patterns are shared with the children and integrated into the lesson plans. The school’s subscription to ‘Spelling Shed’ also allows children to share and practise their spelling at home, thus further strengthening the partnership between home and school.

Benchmarking, standardisation and moderation form an integral part of the assessment of writing with key assessment criteria used to support judgements made and next steps planned and exemplification materials used to validate judgements and provide consistency across all year groups.

Spoken Language

In line with the National Curriculum, opportunities for purposeful talk, role play, drama, collaboration, discussion and debate across the English curriculum are explicitly incorporated into the bi-weekly unit plans.

Listening ladders and listening as well as speaking skills linked to the Oracy Framework are utilised to support the children’s development and personal journey through spoken language as they become confident orators.

As part of the Long-term plan for writing, units of work from ‘Let’s Think in English’ have been carefully matched to support our children to develop the reasoning skills needed for success in English. The lessons include reading, open-ended questioning and structured group discussions that systematically develop skills of inference, deduction, discussion and analysis designed to increase confidence and resilience when expressing views and opinions.

Impact

The impact on our children is evident through their development of clear, progressive and transferable skills in both reading and writing and through their confidence and adaptability in their oracy, both spoken language and listening behaviours.

With the implementation of the English Long-Term plan, the children’s writing journeys are visible and taught thoroughly across KS2. Immersion in a range of genres is familiar to our children as they move throughout the school and our children develop into confident writers who embrace creativity, sustained writing and the manipulation of grammar and punctuation skills.

Through the exposure of high quality and challenging texts, and through strategically planned interventions and adaptations, our children view themselves as readers, develop both fluency and comprehension skill sets and demonstrate a love of reading and books.

We are proud to have laid and built upon the foundations of creative English thinkers, readers and writers and hope that as our children take their next steps on their educational journey, they will continue to build and grow in both academic excellence and a bright literary future.

Please click below to read our long term plan.