THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING AND LEARNING IN ENGLISH English has a pre-eminent place in education and in society. A 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. Through reading in particular, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development. Reading also enables pupils both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know. All the skills of language are essential to participating fully as a member of society; pupils who do not learn to speak, read and write fluently and confidently are effectively disenfranchised. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES At Chaddesley Corbett Primary School, we aim to develop pupils’ abilities within an integrated programme of speaking & listening, reading and writing. Pupils will be given opportunities to interrelate the requirements of English within a broad and balanced approach to the teaching of English, with opportunities to consolidate and reinforce taught literacy skills across the curriculum. Thus, by the end of Year 6 we aim for children to be able to:
read easily, fluently and with good understanding
develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
use discussion in order to learn; to elaborate and clearly explain their understanding and ideas
become competent in speaking and listening; making formal presentations; demonstrating to others and participating in debate
THE TEACHING OF READING At Chaddesley Corbett Primary School, we teach reading through Systematic Synthetic Phonics strategies. We follow the Letters and Sounds programme, teaching the different phases throughout Early Years and Key Stage 1: Pre-School - Phase One activities concentrate on developing children’s speaking and listening skills, phonological awareness and oral blending and segmenting. Reception - Phase Two teaches at least 19 letters, and move children on from oral blending and segmentation to blending and segmenting with letters. Reception - Phase Three teaches another 25 graphemes, most of them comprising two letters (e.g. oa), so the children can represent each of about 42 phonemes by a grapheme.Children also continue to practise CVC blending and segmentation in this phase and will apply their knowledge of blending and segmenting to reading and spelling simple two-syllable words and captions. They will learn letter names during this phase, learn to read some more tricky words and also begin to learn to spell some of these words. Reception - Phase Four consolidates children’s knowledge of graphemes in reading and spelling words containing adjacent consonants and polysyllabic words. Year 1 - Phase Five will allow children to broaden their knowledge of graphemes and phonemes for use in reading and spelling. They will learn new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these and graphemes they already know, where relevant. Year 2 - Phase Six will develop the children's reading fluency and increase the accuracy of spelling.
Phases are constantly revisited to build on previous knowledge. In Key Stage 2, phonics knowledge and fluency is developed further for specific pupils. Guided/group reading takes place every day. In these sessions, pupils are asked to explore themes, vocabulary and author techniques.
THE TEACHING OF WRITING At Chaddesley Corbett Primary School, we teach writing through sequences that focus on Writerly Skills. These are:
Vocabulary
Manipulation of sentence structure
Awareness of audience – purpose
Consistency
Grammatical accuracy – punctuation, tense etc.
Cohesion
Handwriting
Spelling
We use engaging texts, images and other media to immerse the pupils in the writing process and allow them to see each Writerly Skill demonstrated before they attempt it for themselves. Our plans closely follow the National Curriculum programmes of study for English.
Cursive handwriting is taught throughout school, using our own handwriting patter.
