English is at the heart of our curriculum at TGPAH, giving the children the necessary skills to access all other areas of the National Curriculum. We want our pupils to become articulate communicators, thoughtful and talented writers and readers who have a love of books and a desire to discover more about their world.   

Reading.   

We aim to give children an experience of high-quality texts which expose them to a range of differing and significant authors, story genre, styles and themes. High level inference and deduction skills are embedded across reading activities for all our children to improve outcomes and drive standards.   

The teaching of Early Reading starts in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) with daily phonics sessions using “Letters and Sounds”. Lesson material is brought to life through the Twinkl Systematic Synthetic Phonics programme which follows the adventures of Kit, Sam and all their friends.  

Children are arranged into ability-based groups across EYFS and KS1 with teachers and teaching assistants working together to deliver the daily activities which are designed to grab children’s attention and develop understanding.  Pupils are taught to read alongside the phonics lessons using the Rhino Readers Twinkl Phonics Scheme of texts which allows pupils to take home a reading book each week matched to their ability and in line with the phonics patterns being taught in the classroom. Children are expected to read every evening and record what they have read in their homework diaries. All children are also given the opportunity to borrow 2 books a week from the school library, to enhance and develop their overall reading experiences.

Guided Reading.  

Guided reading takes place daily in Key Stage 2 (and is taught in Key Stage 1 along-side daily phonics lessons from the Spring term). Teachers use a range of strategies from whole–class sessions to smaller group focused independent activities. Activities concentrate on and apply the key skills required for children to become confident readers who understand what they are reading. Children are taught to predict, question, clarify and summarise as part of their reading lessons. They are taught to identify and explore new vocabulary to use within their own written work. Our aim is to encourage and enable children to develop a lifelong love of reading and to be able to use the skills that they have in a wide variety of reading situations.   

Writing.   

At Tudor Grange Primary Academy Haselor, we are passionate about ensuring every child can write, and sees themselves as a writer. We strive to ensure that high-quality education in English will teach pupils to speak and write fluently. Our aim is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word. We want every child to acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar, and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing, and spoken language, in a creative, diverse, and purposeful way. We want all pupils to be able to write clearly, accurately, and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes, and audiences. We support students to progressively improve their transcription and composition skills, and from this to plan, revise, and evaluate their writing.

To enable our children to write effectively, and with clarity, we teach writing using “The Write Stuff,” by Jane Considine. We understand that this is a schema, and not a scheme: an effective way to make the complex cognitive load required to write well simple, sticky, and explicit. This approach is being implemented from Reception to Year 6 from September 2023, to allow children to build the substantive and disciplinary knowledge required over time to write effective sentences, with the grammar and vocabulary required explicitly modelled, to lead to confident independent writing. Over time, children will write a broad range of fiction and non-fiction texts, from a variety of themes and inspirations.

The Write Stuff’ brings clarity to the mechanics of teaching writing. It is introduced through the ‘Writing Rainbow’, using three zones of writing. These three essential components consist of: the FANTASTICs (ideas); the GRAMMARISTICs (tools); the BOOMTASTICs (techniques).

The ‘Writing Rainbow’, symbols are used to support children with their writing journey and to ensure that all children can use them in context as they move through school.

In addition to the ‘Writing Rainbow’, ‘Writing Laundry’ is a tool used to support children with editing their writing. The idea behind the laundry is that children have a ‘pupil friendly’ visual reminder of the key components for building a sentence. The ‘Vocabulary Laundry’ lists the words that pupils must spell accurately. The ‘Punctuation Laundry’ outlines the progression of marks that pupils need to acquire. The ‘Sentence Laundry’ the sentence constructions that pupils need to craft to guarantee they have a wealth of different structures to apply in their writing.

Speaking and Listening.  

Spoken language underpins the development of reading and writing. The quality and variety of language that children hear and speak are vital for developing their vocabulary and grammar and in deepening their understanding of reading and writing. Therefore, at TGPAH speaking and listening activities are built into regular lessons where activities such as debates and drama enhance the learning experience across all subjects.  Pupils are taught to develop their capacity to explain their understanding of books and other reading, and to prepare their ideas before they write through story retelling and sharing of ideas.