At Chenies we strive not only to teach the children to develop a love of reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills, but to impress upon them the importance of these skills in their everyday lives. We want our children to develop a positive attitude towards communication and to use the skills we teach them to express their emotions and ideas independently.
The teaching of English follows the National Curriculum. Reading, writing and communication are key skills and children are encouraged to progress at their own pace. The development of literacy skills are not confined to only English lessons but are embedded throughout the curriculum.
Reading is taught in a variety of ways, including systematic synthetic phonics, guided group reading and individual reading. Phonic sounds are taught using Lesley Clarke's synthetic phonics. The majority of reading scheme books used for teaching reading are from The Oxford Reading Tree and Floppy Phonics reading schemes. A range of texts are used: fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry, so that children gain breadth as well as depth. All children have access to a wide range of books, both within the classroom and the school library which they are encouraged to take home to share with parents and carers.
We encourage the children to write in a range of genres dependent on the purpose and audience for which they are writing. From Year 1, children are given spellings to learn at home each week and as children become more proficient they are encouraged to check their own spellings using a dictionary.
Listening skills are developed through story telling, class discussion, drama, music and audio visual material. Children gain confidence through drama, classroom debate, assemblies, school productions and general discussions.
Children are encouraged to develop a clear and fluent style of cursive handwriting, as they progress through the school.
Our English curriculum follows a two cycle. This ensures that all objectives are covered and embedded during the two years a child is in that class.
The units covered are text based and are derived from 'Wordsmith' by Pearson. Each term, children will develop their comprehension and writing skills whilst working from unit that are based on fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts.
We have allocated units from both of the year groups in the class, meaning that children access all units across their two years in an age phase (eg years 3 & 4 in Lower KS2).
In KS2, we have a weekly grammar and spelling focus, where we teach rules from the National Curriculum Objectives. These are then focussed on when writing in class that week.
Attached below are also the statutory spelling words that children are expected to be able to read and spell at particular stages of their primary school years.
Year 1 and 2 Common Exception Words.pdf
Year 3 and 4 Statutory Spellings.pdf
Year 5 and 6 Statutory Spellings.pdf
100 recommended reads for Each Year Group
