At Dunannie we use a variety of teaching and learning styles in our English activities. The key aim is to develop children’s knowledge, skills and understanding. Whilst there is a high proportion of whole-class and group teaching, independent activities provide an opportunity to talk and collaborate, which embeds and enhances their learning.
Children use ICT in English lessons where it enhances their learning, as in drafting their work and using multimedia to study how words and images are combined to convey meaning. Wherever possible we encourage children to use and apply their learning in other areas of the curriculum.
There are six main strands:
Listening and Speaking
Where we encourage children to speak clearly, confidently and audibly and to take account of their listeners and to encourage children to listen with concentration.
In the Foundation Stage (Nursery and Reception) the focus on speaking and listening also prepares the ground for effective phonics teaching.
Children are able to express themselves creatively and imaginatively, as they become enthusiastic and critical readers of stories, poetry, rhymes, action songs, puppets and drama as well as of non-fiction and media texts. Children gain an understanding of how language works by looking at its patterns, structures and origins.
We aim to teach reading for fluency, accuracy and most importantly comprehension. To develop enthusiastic readers through challenging and substantial texts who will have a lifelong love of books.
At Dunannie we teach a variety of reading strategies, but phonics is one of the essential components as we use to teach reading. We use a multi-sensory approach to teach phonics with a range of resources including the Read, Write Inc phonics programme.
We aim to foster the enjoyment of writing in variety of genres and a recognition of its value and to encourage accurate and meaningful writing, be it narrative or non-fiction. A wide variety of stimuli provides the starting point for writing and creative work.
Phonic spelling patterns are taught along with strategies that help children to recognise the visual appearance of words that are not phonetically regular, but common in frequency of use.
Children are first introduced to grammar though simple punctuation, for example, capital letters and full stops. As children progress through the school they are taught to use more complex grammatical structures and sophisticated punctuation.
Regular handwriting lessons reinforce the correct formation of letters, posture and pencil grip. We work towards developing confident joined writing styles by the end of Year 3.