The English Curriculum is delivered using the National Curriculum 2014 and the Early learning Goals are followed to ensure continuity and progression from the Foundation Stage through to the National Curriculum.
SPEAKING AND LISTENING
The Four Strands of Speaking and Listening: Speaking; Listening; Group Discussion and Interaction, and Drama permeate the whole curriculum. Interactive teaching strategies are used to engage all pupils in order to raise reading and writing standards. Children are encouraged to develop effective communication skills in readiness for later life.
The opportunities, organisation and provision for the teaching and learning of reading are as follows:
• Shared reading Guiding Reading Scheme (KS2)
• Guided reading – Oxford Reading Tree Guided Reading Books (KS1) , Rigby Navigator Guiding Scheme
• Independent reading – Oxford Tree Reading Scheme.
• Phonics - Letters and Sounds Scheme (throughout the school) and phonics play for planning and interactive resources.
Teachers also take time to read class novels and model reading for pleasure. It is important that children enjoy reading and also have the opportunity to experience books from classic and modern classic authors such as Michael Morpurgo, Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton among others.
• A range of intervention programmes are used to ensure that all children’s needs are catered for:
Dancing Bears – Phonics
Toe-by-Toe – Spelling
• Resources – A book banded reading scheme operates across the school which comprises of a range of different schemes. Children work their way through the Key Stage One and Two schemes and then become free readers.
• Links to parents – Each child has a reading record book which logs books they have read and comments about their reading. Parents and teaching staff write in this book.
Opportunities, organisation and provision for the teaching and learning of writing are as follows: • Phonics and spelling: Four daily 20 minutes Phonic sessions in Key stage 1 and Reception.
• Emergent writing: In Reception and Key Stage 1 children are given regular opportunities to write freely within a particular genre and across the curriculum. This gives them the opportunity to become emergent writers.
• Shared Writing: Within each teaching sequences shared writing is a key part.
• Guided Writing/Independent Writing: Teaching sequences end with an opportunity for guided and independent writing if appropriate. There are also frequent opportunities for independent writing throughout the other curriculum areas.
• Extended writing/ Big Write: Every week there are opportunities for extended writing. On a half term basis samples of these extended writing outcomes are used for assessment purposes and recorded in the individual half term writing books. In order to inspire children the school has adopted many of the principles linked to Ros Wilson’s Big Write scheme. Children are immersed in a plethora of stimuli in order to ensure they are truly inspired to write.
Talk for Writing: The whole school is developing the talk for writing model termly to aid children with their writing. Children prepare for Big Writes by talking about the theme/topic for homework. The children are able to appreciate structure, vocabulary and style and add this to their personal writing toolkit.
• Handwriting: We are very proud of our pupil’s handwriting and take particular care in our cursive/joined-up handwriting style. In EYFS and KS1 we have started using Letter-join a new handwriting scheme.At the end of Key Stage 2 all pupils should have the ability to produce fluent, legible and, eventually, speedy joined-up handwriting, and to understand the different forms of handwriting used for different purposes.
• Spelling: Children from Years 1 to 6 are assessed and taught in ‘spelling phases’ groups once a week. Each spelling phase had its own list of appropriate spellings for each pupil to learn each week at home. Children are tested on these words weekly. Spelling Homework reinforces these words by encouraging the children to write a different sentence for each spelling.
Teachers provide personalised targets for reading and writing and the children work to achieve these over the course of a term. These targets are shared with parents through parents’ evenings and are displayed in the literacy books.
Work is marked and assessed in line with the Marking and Assessment policies and opportunities are identified for the teachers to moderate the assessment of this work. Work is assessed, at present, using a red, amber, green teacher day to day formative assessment tracking system against the learning objective/success criteria/ARE for the lesson.
The findings of the formative teacher assessment are used alongside more formal testing/summative assessment to inform planning to help the teaching and learning process.
We have developed our own assessment system to ensure that we meet the New National curriculum requirements and the raised expectations that teachers will assess regularly whether a child is working above (exceeding)/ at (expected)/ or below (emerging) the age related expectation (ARE) for their year group. Summative assessment will take place three times a year and a final assessment/report to parents will be made at the end of the academic year
Mickleton Primary and Nursery School, Broadmarston Lane, Mickleton, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, GL55 6SJ