"When you read well, you hear how the parts work together. Once you can do that, you can create writing from parts to a whole you couldn't imagine before." 

At Oldswinford C of E Primary School, we are passionate about the experiences we provide in English for all our pupils.

Reading

We want our children to develop a love for literature and to become responsible readers, appreciating and understanding diversity in our world through varied and frequent reading. We want them to have a passion for books and to see that books provide knowledge, relaxation, escapism, vocabulary, imagination, and enjoyment while simultaneously helping children to boost their own mental health and wellbeing. It is our intent for all our pupils to read fluently and confidently in any subject by the time they are ready to move to secondary school and to become adept at talking deeply about books.

We teach early reading through Rocket Phonics, a systematic synthetic phonics programme. Children from Reception to Year 2 have daily phonics sessions and are taught how to apply their phonic skills and achieve effective blending through our reading scheme - Rising Stars.  

Children in Y2-Y6 take part in daily whole class reading sessions. Our 'Comprehension Crusher' lessons promote the importance of fluency, vocabulary and domain specific skills. Children are taught through a range of strategies such as modelled reading, choral and echo reading as well as timed reading, summarising and question analysis. The Comprehension Crusher scheme aligns with the requirements of the National Curriculum and the progression of skills within the units is available at the bottom of this page (see progression of reading skills in Comprehension Crusher). 

Every class teacher reads to their class on a daily basis. Children love these daily reading for pleasure sessions and talk positively about them. Teachers enjoy this protected time to model reading, promote reading for pleasure, and to experience the benefits that reading brings such as vocabulary enrichment, knowledge of the world, relaxation and improved well-being. 

Reading at home...

We encourage parents and carers to hear their children read as often as possible at home. Each child has a diary which provides a link between home and school and is taken home every day. Regular practice helps children to develop their reading and fluency skills and develop their comprehension and vocabulary. Please see our documents section below for some suggested questions to ask your child when you are listening to them read. 

Children have access to a range of reading materials.  

• They all have a home reading book which is matched to their individual reading level / ability. The expectation is that all children read to an adult at home every day with comments being written into their reading record book.  
• Each classroom has a reading incentive to promote and recognise regular reading at home. 
• Children who are on the Phonics pathway (EYFS and Y1), also use a school-based reading book - their 'Target Practice' book. These books are decodable and used in line with our Systematic Synthetic Phonics programme (Rocket Phonics). These books provide the children with additional opportunities to practise and apply the GPCs that they have been taught to date, whereby if an adult is not present, they are not forced to guess from pictures, content or the first letters of a word or its shape. This ensures that our children feel a sense of achievement with their reading.  
• Children are also invited to borrow a reading book for pleasure from their class reading area or the main school library. Children are encouraged by school staff to select books that are suitable for their age / ability but that also interest and intrigue them.  

Please see the documents section below for a link to our suggested home reading spine. These are high quality books that we feel every child should experience as they are growing up. We encourage all families to enjoy regular reading time at home together and share these wonderful books. Regular updates of newly released books will also be shared on Class Dojo so that parents have an up-to-date selection of the latest books that may be of interest to their children.

Writing

We want our children to have passion and enthusiasm for writing; where their ideas are valued, and they pursue purposeful and authentic writing projects for real audiences. We aim for them all to write clearly, accurately, and coherently, adapting their language and style as necessary. We develop skills progressively so that our pupils have the stamina and ability to write at or above the age expected standard.

We have adopted Pie Corbett's 'Talk for Writing.' This approach advocates children imitating the language needed for a particular piece of writing orally before the go on to read and analyse it. We use a text map to help the children rehearse the model text and then a range of regular writing opportunities to enable the children to craft their own writing in a similar style. 

Phonics

We teach phonics using a systematic synthetic programme called 'Rocket Phonics' and 'Rocket Phonics: Next Steps.' We make phonics a priority in our school by ensuring that lessons are taught with validity to the programme and to a high standard. Children are assessed regularly (half-termly) to monitor progress and identify any gaps in their learning. Children receive additional intervention as and when required. 

Doodle Spell

Doodle Spell is used by class teachers (Y1-Y6) to send home weekly spellings. This learning platform uses an algorithm to generate specific spellings that are aligned personally for the individual learner. Children are encouraged to work through the Doodle Spell challenges 'little and often' by completing 5-10 minutes each day in order to stay in their 'green learning zone.' Doodle Spell runs regular spelling competitions and incentives to encourage children to learn and love spelling! Many of our pupils earn themselves Doodle pin badges when they complete these spelling challenges. 

Reading Ambassadors at Oldswinford...

We are very proud of our team of Reading Ambassadors at Oldswinford. These children are a group of enthusiastic Year 6 children who are keen to spread their love of reading around our school. The Reading Ambassadors work closely with Mrs Dunn to implement new reading initiatives to promote reading. One of their favourite things to do is being a 'Reading Buddy.' This allows them the opportunity to buddy up with younger children in Years 1-3. Each week the Reading Buddies visit their own small group of selected children in a specific class. They spend time listening to their buddy read to them and help them to develop further confidence and a love for reading. It is so wonderful to see our older pupils supporting and encouraging our younger pupils. 

English Documents