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English
Reading
At Shawley Community Primary Academy reading is a golden thread that weaves through our curriculum. This puts reading at the heart of our curriculum and shows the importance and value of learning to read through stimulating texts that are related to our wider curriculum.
We are committed to providing opportunities for all pupils to gain an enjoyment of reading and achieve the key early reading and comprehension skills needed to become a proficient reader. We endeavour to ensure that our children develop a positive and enthusiastic attitude towards reading that will stay with them forever through high quality texts from different genres.
Children have frequent, regular and sustained opportunities to read and to talk together about the books that they are reading individually, in small groups and as a whole class. This helps the children to reach a shared understanding and build on their cultural literacy. We plan opportunities for all children to extend their vocabulary through a range of genres and subject related texts to consolidate their understanding.
In EYFS and KS1, we use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds scheme and our children consolidate and apply their phonics knowledge at home through reading a range of books. These include books that closely match their phonics ability and link to the phonics taught during the week, library books to share with their families and a reading scheme book to develop comprehension skills.Children are encouraged to read and re-read a text to revisit, practise and apply new and known sounds and to develop their reading fluency.
During whole class discrete Reading lessons in KS2 and from the Spring term in Year 2, children explore a range of texts in more detail to develop their comprehension. They are taught a range of different reading skills such as retrieval, inference and prediction and practise applying those skills to a range of texts throughout the year. Children in KS2 learn how to provide evidence to justify their answers as well as analyse the language choices that an author has used.
Writing
Writing at Shawley Community Primary Academy is taught through immersion into high quality texts. Each term every class is taught English skills through a book, which at times, is linked to their current topic. The teaching of English builds cross-curricular links so that high quality literature is at the heart of our curriculum and the children’s learning.
Within our approach to the teaching of writing at Shawley, we embed the teaching of phonics, grammar, punctuation and spelling.
Grammar, Spelling & Punctuation (GPS)
Each week, pupils are introduced to a spelling rule or pattern to focus on. They will then have a list of spellings to bring home to learn based on their classwork. Once a pupil can spell the words on the list it is useful to test them on other words that follow the same rule/pattern. This then ensures they know the rule and can apply it to any word.
The teacher will test pupils on their spellings in class. This will not always be done through a traditional test. Sometimes pupils will have a dictation task or spelling activity to complete. Pupils will be encouraged to write in their diaries how many spellings they spelt correctly so that you can see how they got on.
There is a downloadable list of the statutory curriculum words set by the government. They are broken down into Years 1/2, 3/4 and 5/6. Some of these curriculum words will be included in your child’s spelling list each week and are taught alongside the rule that they are working on in class.
If you would like to practise these words with your child across the school year they will find it beneficial to their spelling and writing. Please also explain the meaning of the words as well as ways to help them remember the spelling.
Each week, the children will be exposed to the spelling rule and this will be explicitly taught in class time. There will be some spelling tips and ideas to help your children with their spellings and ways to remember them.
