English
Through a high quality English curriculum, we intend for our pupils to:
- Develop a love of reading, writing and language.
- Communicate effectively, developing strong discussion and listening skills.
- Access to, and appreciation of, vocabulary rich texts to nurture their
imaginations. - Be able to retrieve, infer and deduce with growing confidence with ageappropriate texts.
- Confidently communicate their knowledge, ideas and emotions through their
writing. - Write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting language and style for a
range of genres. - Identify their own areas for improvement in their written work, editing their
work effectively during and after the writing process. - Take pride in the presentation and standard of their written work.
Phonics
At St John Vianney Catholic Primary School we follow Read, Write Inc, a progressive phonics programme. It aims to prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills. We have daily phonic sessions for all of our children in Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1. Children are grouped according to their phonetic ability. Catch up sessions are carried out for those that need extra support.
Writing
At St John Vianney, we use a quality stimulus to engage children in the writing process, for example, using a high-quality fiction/non-fiction text, a short film or a real-life context/purpose. We teach children to ‘chunk’ their narrative writing into plot points to help them to write sequentially and cohesively. As part of our writing lessons, children are given opportunities to ‘chot’ (chat and jot) their ideas; they are exposed to quality texts as WAGOLLs as well as teacher modelling of the writing process in every lesson. There is clear and consistent structure to every writing lesson which helps this to be reinforced throughout school.
RWI Spelling is taught daily in Y2/KS2 to ensure that children make progress in their spelling and that spelling rules and patterns can be applied when writing independently. Children are taught to edit their work carefully using a range of approaches.
Reading
Reading has a key role to play in our children’s education. In our school, we recognise that reading is an integral part of the school day and value highly its contribution to children’s learning.
Children are encouraged to read a wide range of books. All children in the school take home a book banded book which matches their reading ability. Whilst in Foundation Stage and KS1, children take home phonetically decodable books from the RWI scheme to aid fluency. All children are encouraged to use the school library to take home a book for reading with pleasure.
Whole Class Reading
As a school, we have adapted a ‘Whole Class Reading’ approach to ensure that all children have access to challenging and vocabulary rich texts. Reading skills are taught during these lessons and all children are taught to read with intonation and fluency.
