English
Our vision at the Isle of Ely is for children to develop a love of English and an enjoyment for literature, whilst recognising the significance of English in being the key to opening new opportunities. Alongside this, we hope to equip children with the essential skills they will need for the rest of their educational journey and future careers. By the time they leave our school, children are able to express themselves clearly orally and in writing, take part in discussions, read fluently and have a broad and varied vocabulary. We ensure that all children are supported and encouraged to have high aspirations for their futures.
Speaking and listening
Intent
At Isle of Ely, we want children to feel confident in expressing their thoughts across a variety of situations. Our aim is for children to be able to understand their emotions and feel comfortable in communicating these, as well as any worries to adults. Furthermore, we would like to see children sharing their ideas with peers and staff throughout the school, as well as being able to ask questions, take part in discussions and be able to construct arguments.
Implementation
We believe that speaking plays an important role in developing children’s thought processes and therefore ensure that we provide plenty of opportunities for children to build and strengthen their oracy skills. Lessons include time for group and whole class discussions to support children with forming their ideas and in increasing their confidence with speaking in front of others. Staff model expectations for how discussions should take place and always encourage children to ask questions. Children are taught how to use and manipulate language for a variety of purposes such as informing, explaining and persuading, and are given opportunities to put these into practise. Across our curriculum, we also embed plenty of drama in order for children to explore and develop their ideas through communicating with peers. Children in Reception and Year 1 are explicitly taught how to retell stories and poems and this practice of reciting poems and stories continues through Key Stage 2. This enables pupils to rehearse using different structures and vocabulary in a familiar context.
Impact
As a result of all of this, our children feel comfortable using their speaking and listening skills across a variety of contexts and situations that they may encounter throughout their education and working lives. Our children leave school feeling confident to talk to teachers, children and other people they may encounter in the wider community, whilst feeling secure and comfortable in expressing themselves.
Reading
'Story time is the best part of the day'
‘I love the stories we have been reading this year. They are filled with so much suspense!'
'Reading lessons are great because we learn new words and get to answer questions.'
'I have enjoyed all the books we’ve read this year – especially the one that was set locally!'
'In our English, we’ve been learning about Macbeth and I really enjoy all the different plots within it.'
Intent
We seek to instil a love of reading in our children where they are passionate about literature, whilst simultaneously creating fluent and confident readers who can comprehend what they have read.
Implementation
Our adults lead by example through daily story times across the school where they share their passion for books and spark an interest in the children. Regular visits to our library ensure that children have access to a vast variety of literature across a range of genres and authors, as well as non-fiction and poetry books. Dedicated time for reading in school ensures that all children acknowledge the importance of reading and have exposure to high quality literature. By having a strong reading culture embedded in our school, new experiences are opened to our children, as well as supporting them in developing a better understanding of other cultures.
Through our ambitious curriculum, we ensure that all children are able to read fluently and comprehend what they have read by the time they finish Year 6. Starting from Early Years and in Key Stage One, children are taught all of the sounds and their matching graphemes, as well as learning how to blend these in order for them to be able to decode words on a page. We follow the systematic approach of Read Write Inc to plan and sequence lessons where children work in small groups to build upon their phonic knowledge and read fully decodable books tailored to their level. This ensures that children develop an enjoyment for reading as they are able to decode every word in these books. Read Write Inc lessons are structured so that children are first taught to recognise the sounds and blend these to read each word and then build on this to increase their reading speed, as well as reading with expression. It is our aim for children to have completed their phonics journey by the end of Key Stage One. However, interventions are put in place for children who continue to need this support in Key Stage Two. Right from the start of Read Write Inc, children are encouraged to respond to the stories they have read and teachers explicitly model how to deduce and infer information from the pictures and the text. This ensures that our children have had plenty of comprehension practise by the end of Key Stage One and are well prepared for the rest of their educational journey.
In Key Stage Two, whole class guided reading sessions expose children to high quality literature in order to challenge them and increase the range of genres they have read. Key reading skills such as retrieval, scanning and inference are explicitly taught in these sessions and children are given time to practise and embed these skills. Through providing children with access to more challenging literature, we hope to support the development of a wide vocabulary that children can use as well as developing their understanding of word choices that authors make.
Impact
Consequently, our children leave us being able to read fluently and confidently, and are equipped with the necessary reading skills they need for the rest of their education and future careers.
Writing
'I like doing story maps and retelling the story with actions.'
'Some of the actions are funny and they make me laugh.'
'I like that we write our stories over a few lessons and can focus on part of it each day. This helps me to write better as I have time to think about and use everything I’ve learnt.'
'The spelling challenges are great as we can practise spelling rules and learn how to spell tricky words.'
'I really enjoy writing and learning the toolkits for each type of text.' 'Lately, we’ve written persuasive letters, I can see how this will help me in the future.'
Intent
At our school, we strive for all children to be able to coherently express their ideas in writing and be confident in writing for a variety of purposes and audiences. Writing is an essential skill that they will need throughout their lives therefore we hope to prepare them for this. We have planned our writing curriculum based on recent research of best practice for developing strong writers.
Implementation
In Reception and Year 1, children practise composition through oral activities before their transcription becomes fluent. By composing 5 sentence stories as a class using a planned progression of story signposts, which are then practiced each day, pupils learn a variety of story structures and build their vocabulary. Through RWI phonics lessons and handwriting lessons children get the practice they need to acquire fluent transcription skills (spelling and handwriting), which is the foundation for their progress in writing. In Year 1, carefully chosen dictation activities following RWI enable pupils to practise and apply their spelling knowledge and segmenting skill to use the content they have been taught and to do so without having their working memories overloaded by composing sentences. To prepare them for following a Talk4Writing approach from Year 2 upwards, pupils in Year 1 are encouraged to write the sentences they have composed orally in the 5 sentence stories, applying their phonic and spelling knowledge.
We ensure the curriculum secures the knowledge needed for successful writing: knowledge about the topic and knowledge about how to write, by including key vocabulary into every lesson, and by basing writing on model texts, recently studied topics or books. Pupils write frequently, for a range of audiences and purposes, which are planned to ensure pupils are exposed to and write in a range of genres and on a range of topics. Pupils’ accuracy and automaticity in transcription are developed early on and secured by continued teaching of CUSP spellings, use of model texts to reduce cognitive overload and daily short burst writes to practice different sentence types. Older pupils are then able to pay attention to the higher-level processes of composing, planning, writing and revision, using exposure to model texts and a variety of quality examples of the type of writing they are completing. Teachers directly teach sentence construction, control of grammar and syntax, by selecting writers’ tools from the National Curriculum and Talk4Writing guidance. They make sure pupils understand the purpose and effect of these tools and can use the appropriate grammatical language. Pupils plan, draft, revise and edit their writing, presenting it in Best Books at the end of each unit.
Impact
Subsequently, our children develop a high level of English, including a wide range of vocabulary for them to be able to articulate their ideas with. By the end of Year 6, they have a broad understanding of how to write for a range of text types and are confident in writing for a variety of purposes an audiences.