READING

At Hundon and Thurlow Primary Federation we foster a love of reading because we understand the importance that reading plays in developing children's confidence and in allowing them full access to the wider curriculum.  We want to ensure our children are ready for the next stage of their education and provide them with crucial skills and knowledge which will support their future success.

EARLY YEARS FOUNDATION STAGE (RECEPTION) & KEY STAGE ONE (YEARS 1 & 2)

In Reception and Key Stage 1, our children will read with an adult at least once a week on a one-to-one basis. This is in addition to any whole class and group reading that will also take place during the week. We explicitly teach phonics decoding skills daily, using the DfE approved Twinkl synthetic phonics programme. We understand that effective evidence based reading instruction has five essential components: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.  We therefore ensure our pupils are given lots of opportunities to listen to and read a wide range of texts.  Our daily phonics sessions are complemented by a literature-rich environment and by allowing our pupils to experience reading authentic literature and familiar materials in a variety of contexts across the curriculum. 

Early intervention for pupils with reading difficulties is crucial and we ensure that these children are quickly identified so we can put additional support in place to meet their needs.

KEY STAGE TWO (YEARS 3, 4, 5 & 6)

In Key Stage 2, children are taught to analyse and discuss a wide range of texts using a whole-class-teaching sequence. Children take turns to read aloud, listen to the teacher read and then discuss the texts in pairs and groups, focusing on themes, conventions, characters, language and structure. Children are taught to justify their answers and participate respectfully in discussions about texts.

At least once per week, children in Key Stage 2 also take part in a reciprocal reading where children work in small groups to analyse a text, using key areas, including:

• Vocabulary
• Inference
• Prediction
• Explanation
• Retrieval
• Questioning
• Clarifying
• Sequencing or Summarising

Children then have the opportunity to feed back to one another and share their findings in groups.

 

Ideas for Reading at Home

Click here to download Pearson's 'Enjoy Reading' guide for parents.

 

WRITING

At Hundon and Thurlow Primary Federation we teach writing using a variety of strategies to inspire our children's work. We take many principles from the ‘Talk for Writing’ philosophy, as laid out by Pie Corbett, but combine these with techniques and ideas from the ‘Power of Reading’ philosophy. Our children use drama and text-interrogation techniques, as well as spend time unpicking the technical features of the text type and investigating language and structure. With all of these tools and techniques at their disposal, our children are able to use high-level, quality literacy texts to inspire high quality writing.

Our children are encouraged to edit their work by "Purple Polishing" and redrafting, using a range of tools to support them in their work. We use a range of peer, teacher and self-marking where children use structured ‘Steps to Success’ toolkits to assess their work.

Assessment is both formative and summative, with our children being given a combination of written and verbal feedback to inform their improvements and next steps. Teachers will assess children's writing against the objectives of the National Curriculum and use these to inform their planning for each written theme.

Spelling and Grammar

Spelling

Spelling is taught discretely throughout the whole school as part of our daily skills sessions with specific spelling patterns and rules are taught in each phase.

Children also take part in spelling challenges, whereby they learn specific patterns, rules or groups of words. When children are ready to be tested, they take their challenge, which assesses their ability to spell the words, often using a dictation. Children who are successful then move onto the next level of challenge.

Grammar

In Key Stage 2 (Years 3-6), we teach whole-class Grammar sessions in-line with the National Curriculum as part of our skills sessions.

Grammar will be taught discretely a minimum of 3 times per week and is revisited during ‘Do It Now’ tasks and ‘Talk Tasks’ at the beginning of sessions. Some English lessons will have a grammar focus when teaching writing skills, particularly when looking at advanced punctuation, which impacts on the meaning of sentences. Children in Year 6 will revise concepts from all previous year groups, as well as learning new grammar and punctuation as specified by the National Curriculum.