English

Our English Vision

Igniting a passion for literature and developing writers for the real world.

Our Principles of English Teaching

We know that great English happens in our school when:

•  Children are writing for read audiences and purposes.

• Children are motivated to write and strive to achieve their best through editing and redrafting.

• Children present their ideas in a variety of ways and do so with pride.

• Children enjoy reading a variety of genres written by a variety of authors.

• Children complete varied tasks of achievable but challenging difficulty.

Phonics

At Key Stage 1, we follow 'Letters and Sounds' as our Phonics programme and pupils are grouped for these sessions according to need. Phonics is taught daily in KS1 for 20 minutes, covering all phases within the programme and including elements of SPAG (spelling, punctuation and grammar).

What is Letters and Sounds?

Letters and Sounds is a phonics resource published by the Department for Education and Skills in 2007. It aims to build children's speaking and listening skills in their own right as well as to prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills. It sets out a detailed and systematic programme for teaching phonic skills for children starting by the age of five, with the aim of them becoming fluent readers by age seven. There are six overlapping phases.

For more detailed information, visit the Letters and Sounds website.

Reading in Key Stage 1

The Key Stage One Reading Scheme is made up of coloured bookbands which children move through as they progress in reading.  We benchmark children each half term to assess which bookband the children should be accessing.  The "reading expectations" document below explains which colours should be read in each year group.

Reading in Key Stage 2

Our school Reading Scheme was updated in 2014 and will soon be online for Calveley children to access at home. In order to foster a love of reading and to ensure that children meet a range of text styles, the reading scheme is vast.

Publishers/schemes include: PEARSON, Oxford Reading Tree, Collins Big Cat, PM Benchmark, Project X and a mix of individually levelled books.

If you'd like to check whether a book you have at home is on the Accelerated Reader system, use the button below.  The "reading expectations" document below also explains which level children should be reading in each year group. 

 

Spelling

Throughout the school we teach spelling during discrete Letters and Sounds and SPaG (spelling, punctuation and grammar) sessions.  Children explore spelling rules and patterns and apply this understanding in their written work. 

The children also learn a specific list of words from their year group spelling list.  Each week, they spend some of their spelling lesson time learning the words which they are then assessed on at the end of the week.  Only when they spell are able to spell the words correctly, can they move on to the next set of words.  The "spelling progression" document below details all of the spellings to be learnt within each year group.  The spelling patterns can also be found within the "spelling patterns" document. 

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