English

Intent– The Knowledge and Skills that our school wants its pupils to gain during their time with us.

Hunmanby Primary School believes that Literacy is a fundamental and integrated component of the primary curriculum. We also believe that a pupils’ ability to use and apply language competently and confidently in a range of situations is a vital tool for learning, fully accessing the curriculum and life beyond school.  We want Literacy to be exciting and inspiring, and for all the children to find it stimulating and at the same time purposeful. We believe children should;

• Develop a love of language, reading and writing.
• Be provided with the opportunity to read, write and develop oral and listening skills through drama and other structured activities, ensuring a strong application of skills across the whole curriculum.
• Be given equal access and opportunity to develop Literacy skills to their full potential.
• Be provided with a rich variety of texts and ‘real life’ experiences to enhance their learning in Literacy.
• Have an audience and purpose in which to write
• Develop the confidence to speak, listen, read and write with fluency, understanding and appropriateness in a range of different situations.

Implementation– The way that literacy is taught throughout the school. It is how we achieve our intent.

Teachers use The Write Stuff as a starting point to develop an exciting curriculum, by using meaningful learning hooks and the contexts of the broader curriculum (where appropriate) as the vehicle for learning Literacy skills, together with a central role played by books, selected texts and information pieces. Teachers maximise all opportunities to give Literacy a real purpose. Teachers use the national curriculum and in EYFS the Early Years Framework to plan Literacy. 

Writing

We intend that all children at Hunmanby will become confident, competent writers and will develop their own writer’s voice. Writing gives children a way to communicate effectively with others: to share their thoughts, ideas, beliefs, emotions, cultural identity and express who they are.

We use Jane Considine’s ‘The Write Stuff’ approach.  This programme teaches literacy through books and is based on two guiding principles; teaching sequences that slide between experience days, and sentence stacking lessons. With modelling at the heart of them, the sentence stacking lessons are broken into bite-sized chunks and taught under the structural framework of ‘The Writing Rainbow.’ Teachers prepare children for writing by modelling the ideas, grammar or techniques of writing.

This writing approach allows children to…

• understand how to apply sentence scaffolds to their independent writing as they develop their expertise.
• have a clear view of what high quality writing looks like and their learning is structured clearly and misconceptions dealt with.
• improve their writing and make it more focused. Actionable feedback is provided to guide their learning.
• have a concept of how to build, plan and complete a piece of writing due to narrative maps and non-fiction shapes.

Using ‘The Write Stuff’ approach, we have developed a progressive long-term plan for the teaching of writing across the school, with high-quality and diverse reading materials at the heart of the teaching of writing.

Speaking and Listening

Speaking and Listening is an extremely valuable tool which is used across all curriculum areas. The National Curriculum speaking and listening objectives are used in planning activities across the curriculum, through Curriculum Maestro. Children are encouraged to use Standard English when speaking with adults and in all formal situations. Situations are provided for children to experience different Speaking and Listening scenarios: one to one; group; whole class; role play; drama; performance poetry, reading aloud; giving and following commands/ instructions.

Phonics

See separate ‘Early Reading and Phonics Policy.’

Spelling

From Year 2, Spelling is taught every day for 20 minutes. We follow the Rising Stars spelling programme. Children work through different spelling rules linked to the National Curriculum PoS. They also have books that have spellings in them for the children to practise at home.

As a school we have an agreed spelling format that we follow in our marking and feedback. It consists of 4 steps and is designed to allow children to become independent spellers. The 4 step are:

1. The spelling is identified for the child and written out at the bottom of their piece of work correctly. The child then has to copy the spelling 4 times next to it.
2. The spelling is identified by sp written in the margin and the word underlined. The child then has to use a dictionary independently to correct it and write the correct spelling above or in the margin.
3. The letters sp are written in the margin of the line the spelling mistake is on but the child has to work out which spelling on that line is spelt incorrectly and then correct it independently.
4. The child finds and corrects their own spellings in a piece of writing independently.

A child can be at any step in any year group depending on their spelling ability.

Reading

We want all our children to love reading and once they have learnt to read, to use reading as a tool to learn as well as reading for enjoyment. At Hunmanby we believe in reading within the community too and have developed our Little Free Library as well as a reading shed for the community to use. Reading is initially taught by developing left to right eye movements, and learning the skill of blending phonemes for reading (see Little Wandle policy). Teachers provide a stimulating and print-rich environment and use play and more structured activities to teach and promote reading.  We want reading to have a high profile in school and regularly have reading events as well as author visits in school to promote the enjoyment of reading. We have also changed reading books into phonics phases rather than colour bands as we feel this is more appropriate for the children in line with the Little Wandle programme. In Spring 2022, the staff and children undertook a whole school project to develop the new school library. Significant resources were purchased resulting in a modern, inviting space for classes to spend time in. Each class have weekly library sessions to encourage and promote the love of reading. Further developments have included the purchase of books relating to The Write Stuff genres and non-fiction text types. 

Guided Reading

Children will read to an adult  three times a week in Reception and Year 1 through  our Little Wandle programme. Each session focuses on a different area- fluency, prosody and comprehension.  Guided Reading sessions are used to teach the progressive skills of reading; moving towards the higher order skills such as using inference, understanding viewpoint and literary features and techniques. Guided reading takes place daily from the Spring Term in Reception and from September in Year 1. This is linked to our Little Wandle Early reading and phonics programme.  In Year 2 the children have a session with an adult focussing on higher order questions and inference skills, as well as taking part in other reading activities throughout the week.   In KS2 the focus is on whole class reading sessions. Children move from a grouped approach to whole class during Year 3, when appropriate. In Year 3, 4, 5 and 6, Guided Reading is taught to the whole class three times per week, each session focuses on prosody and fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.  Pupils may also participate in catch up interventions as well.

Whole Class Story Time

At Hunmanby we value story time and think it is an extremely important activity. It is important that children hear adults read out loud and enjoy a variety of genres of books. The story is often linked to a particular topic or a story that fits in with the interests of the children; this is left to teacher’s discretion. Across school we make sure we timetable story time in and this happens at least 4 times a week.

Handwriting

At Hunmanby we have a whole school handwriting policy. We use the cursive script for handwriting. In EYFS/Y1 the children are taught how to form their letters correctly. By the end of Year 2 most of the children will be joining using the cursive handwriting script. In Year 3 and 4 handwriting practice happens to embed what the children have learnt in Year 2.  Handwriting intervention takes place in KS2 for those children that need it.

Planning

Teacher’s plan using The Write Stuff- see long term plan. EYFS use curriculum maestro to plan their literacy and create lessons on their timetable using the planning tool. 

Reading books in school

The school’s reading scheme draws together various published schemes. These books are levelled and colour coded by reading age. Staff use their professional judgment when assessing pupils’ levels on the reading scheme and choosing new books. Assessments are made through guided and individual reading.

EYFS/Y1 and some Y2: These children follow the Little Wandle Reading Scheme. Books are matched to the phonics phase the children are learning. Therefore the book they are reading will have no sounds the children haven’t learnt. The children have 3×30 minute sessions per week with an adult. They then take the same book home and keep this for a week so they can reinforce the skills of fluency, prosody and comprehension.

Y2: Children always have one reading scheme book which is monitored and regularly changed. Teachers and TAs who listen to children read regularly assess their ability to read and understand the level of book they are on. All reading books should link with the phonic level of the child and be used to practice the sounds taught in phonics to develop children’s blending skills.

KS2: Children in KS2 change their own reading scheme books when they have finished it. They must have read it at home to an adult and their reading records must be signed before they can change their book.The children work their way through the reading scheme until they reach the end and then they move towards a more independent approach to choosing and reading a wide variety of text types, and these choices are made in conjunction with the class teacher.

ICT in Literacy

The use of ICT is built into the delivery of Literacy wherever possible through the IWB via Curriculum Maestro. Class sets of laptops and ipads are also available for classes to link ICT and literacy work. In Year 5 and 6 children have their own chromebooks that they can produce work on as well as doing research.

Presentation

Presentation is very important and this value is encouraged in the children. Their work conveys meaning / information, so the layout, organisation and neatness are vital for this to happen.

Reception: A variety of implements are used for mark making and emergent writing. Pencils should be used for first attempts at writing. Plain paper is used initially with the introduction of lines as appropriate.

Y1 – Y6: Pencils are used for written work, transferring to blue ink when there is a definite development towards fluent, correctly formed script. From year 2 work is headed and dated, however year 1 children will do this when they are ready. The full date is used for all literacy activities. Plain paper with line guides or lined paper can be used. Errors with ink are ruled through with a single line. Green pens are used from Y1-6 for all response tasks carried out.

SEND and Inclusion

Children with SEND are supported by an Inclusion Passport. The teachers and TA’s have a bank of resources which will support the children with SEND. Whenever possible there will be classroom support for children identified as having SEND. All children must be included in lessons and activities unless reasonable adjustments need to be made. Pupils not on the SEND register, but in need of ‘catch up’ sessions in reading, writing, SPaG or phonics are given access to these when and where appropriate. (Also refer to the school’s SEND and Inclusion Policies and the Gifted and Talented Policy).

Homework

The purpose of homework is to learn facts / spellings or to reinforce or develop skills, i.e. research skills, writing in a particular style, using apostrophes etc.

Children have a list of spellings in KS1 and KS2 to learn every week. Children take their reading books home every day and record any reading they do at home in their reading records, and adults who listen to them at home can write comments in the reading records too. Other Literacy type homework is given at the teachers’ discretion.

Impact– How the literacy curriculum we have set out for our school (implementation) has progressed and developed the pupils learning, and how we know it has done what we wanted.

Assessment

Work is formatively assessed through each Write stuff unit.   Work is marked and children are given feedback either written or verbal which then leads to correction and/or improvement. The correction or improvement is then completed by the child in green pen.

Writing is assessed every half term using internal assessment proformas, that indicate whether children are working TOWARDS, WITHIN EXPECTED or at GREATER DEPTH for their year group. In EYFS and Year 6, statutory assessment frameworks are used. These can all be found in the children’s literacy books (apart from EYFS). One piece of assessed writing is put into the child’s writing assessment portfolio at the end of the academic year; this portfolio is passed up the school with the child.

Reading is assessed using a range of tools: individual reading books, guided reading, reading comprehension books and summative tests. Data is recorded via Curriculum Maestro. Phonic assessments are on going every half term to inform teaching and learning and ‘Keep Up’ groups. All pupils in the school are tracked using our pupil tracking system (Curriculum Maestro).

(Also see Assessment Policy).

Monitoring and Reviewing

The subject leaders will monitor the implementation of this policy through: discussions with staff; monitoring children’s work and pupil progress; book scrutinies; support teachers; lesson observations to identify strengths and share good practice; provide appropriate resources; disseminate any relevant research, inspection findings or other information from courses or network meetings; liaise with the literacy governor; review and alter the policy every year or as necessary.