English
English at Elizabeth Selby Infant School
At Elizabeth Selby Infant School, English sits at the heart of our curriculum – it is through language, story and text that children learn to form concepts, connect ideas and express themselves. We strive to develop a love for the English language in its written and spoken forms. We encourage children to develop the skills to communicate confidently and effectively in speaking and writing. Children learn to listen with understanding and to be responsive, enthusiastic, knowledgeable and reflective. We aim to provide a language rich environment that is motivating and purposeful.
To support reading and writing the school uses the Tower Hamlets Partnership Phonics Programme (see Phonics section).
Phonics
Phonic is taught daily across the school, both whole class and streamed.
Nursery
Phase 1 develops listening skills and awareness of sounds in the environment. In spring term children are introduced to phase 2.
Reception
Children are taught phases 2-4 in discrete phonics sessions. By the end of Reception, the children will have been exposed to phase 5 in preparation for year 1.
Year 1
Revision of phases 2-4 continues. Phase 5 is then taught fully in year 1.
Year 2
Phase 5 is consolidated and children begin learning more complex grammar and spelling patterns.
Reading
Developing a love of reading is the single most powerful attribute that can make a difference to our children’s attainment and enhance their futures.
From the Early Years Foundation Stage, up to Year Two, children here at Elizabeth Selby are encouraged to develop an enjoyment of reading and love of books.
How do we do this?
Providing high quality books, children can focus on powerful language, looking at key texts and considering the features of genres. In the Early Years, we teach communication and language, reading and writing through high quality and engaging play based activities.
Two year olds and Nursery
Nursery rhymes and action songs are very much a focus as children begin to develop their communication, language and listening skills. Key texts are also used to link to the termly topics.
Reception
In Reception, assessing children’s ability to blend sounds such as c-a-t spells cat, takes place early in the new term.
Using this information, the teacher can plan steps to provide strategies for children to develop skills in being able to read.
The children have daily guided reading sessions where children read in small groups, 1-1 with an adult, individually or whole class with the teacher.
Year 1
Children revise prior learning and continue to build upon their ability to decode - as in Reception. Guided reading sessions continue daily.
Children progress through colour banded books as they further their skills and apply strategies to become more competent readers.
Colour banded books are taken home, alongside a book of choice to read for pleasure.
Year 2
Guided Reading continues to takes place daily.
Children use their prior knowledge and a range of skills to become more fluent readers.
Interventions
We have a range of interventions strategies covering all aspects of reading to support children who may struggle to develop the key skills.
Whole school
As part of our whole school approach to foster a love of reading, children have a story read to them every day as part of our core values.
Twice a week children take home a book they can independently read and a book of choice that could be read to them at home. They also have a reading diary for parents to comment in.
Children regularly take books home or have books read to them. We communicate with parents though a reading diary. We’ve developed a ‘Snuggle Up and Read’ scheme to encourage parental engagement. Also National events around reading are celebrated with the community. We also have a school library to encourage independent choice of literature.
Writing
Through creative and careful planning that factors in challenges, all children have the opportunity to practise and build their confidence in writing.
Two Year Olds
Two year olds begin their writing journey through early marking making. Children have access to a variety of media to support this.
Nursery
Nursery provides rich opportunities to mark math both indoors and outdoors, often built around a story or topic they are learning. Children have access to a range of activities that promote both fine and gross motor skills.
Reception
The work on fine and gross motor skills continues in Reception. Children continue working on letter formation and using their phonic knowledge, begin to write common words and simple sentences.
Year 1
The writing journey continues in year 1 with children writing short sentences with punctuation and some accuracy with spelling. They are exposed a range of text from different genres to provide stimulus for writing.
Year 2
In year 2 children build on prior learning and expand their skills. They begin to write longer pieces paying attention to grammar, hand writing, spelling and punctuation. Children learn to write for a variety of different audiences.
In all year groups Topic based learning is used to enable children to make connections through writing across the curriculum in a creative way.
“Reading is like breathing in, writing is like breathing out.” Pam Allyn
Phonics
At Elizabeth Selby Infant School, we use The Tower Hamlets Partnership Phonics
Programme. This is a systematic synthetic phonics programme based on ‘Letters and Sounds’ which promotes the use of phonics as the prime route to reading unknown words, the programme is validated by the DfE.
Phonics is taught daily across the school. Lessons are sequenced to enable children to read and spell simple words to more complex words using their phonic knowledge and skills. The scheme covers all the major GPCs (grapheme-phoneme correspondences) in English that children need to meet the expected standard.
There are four key concepts that we teach to all pupils, these are:
- Letters are symbols (spellings) that represent sounds.
- A sound may be spelled by one, two, three or four letters:
E.g. dog street night eight
- The same sound can be spelled in more than one way:
E.g. rain acorn cake day
- Many spellings can represent more than one sound:
E.g. head seat break
There are three key skills that we teach to all pupils, these are:
- Blending: the ability to push sounds together to build words.
- Segmenting: the ability to pull apart the individual sounds in words.
- Phoneme manipulation: the ability to insert sounds into and delete sounds out of words.
Tricky Words:
Tricky words enable children to read texts. These words cannot be sounded out using phonics and are words that the children will come across in many books.
For example:
I go to into was the
Tricky words are built into each phase of the programme.
Each lesson is built around direct teaching sessions (revise, hear, read, write, apply), with teacher-child interaction. Throughout each session, children actively engage in the learning. Assessment is carried out at regular intervals. Children who are recognised as needing further support, receive a tailored approached though intervention strategies.
