English Implementation

implementation

We teach our children the skills to help them:

Listen attentively:

Paying attention to detail to process the information and respond.

Modelling reading out loud
Encouraging the sharing of work

Talk confidently:

Explore, develop and sustain ideas through talk. Speak confidently with intonation, clear diction, accurate grammar and style with regard to their audience.

Effective questioning
Discussion using ‘book talk.’
Partner talk

Read fluently:

Using appropriate expression and intonation, with good comprehension, from a wide variety of texts, at their own level, for pleasure.

Daily phonics (Read, Write, Inc) in Early Years and KS1
CLPE Power of Reading strategies in KS2
Appropriate-level home reading books
Buddy reading, engaging book corners and visits to the school library

Understand and interpret texts:

Retrieving, deducing, identifying and explaining the writers' use of syntax, context, vocabulary and literary features.

Daily comprehension carousel in KS1
Daily guided reading in KS2
Quality texts
Texts linked to topics and areas of interest

Write for a range of purposes:

Develop their skills, imagination and personal expression through a range of writing tasks using clear, concise language with accurate punctuation and grammar in a style appropriate for the purposes.

Opportunities for independent, free writing
One ‘Big Write’ every term

Spell competently:

Become a competent speller using a range of strategies.

Read, Write Inc in Early Years and KS1
National Curriculum and topic-based spelling in KS2
Weekly spelling lists for homework, tested weekly

Write legibly:

Using neat, legible joined handwriting in the cursive style.

Take pride in their presentation.
Use PenPals handwriting in Years 2-4
Individual handwriting interventions in Years 5-6

Evaluate critically:

Make fair critical responses about their own language work, that of their peers and a variety of published authors.

Reading high-quality, thought-provoking and inspiring texts.

We provide exceptional opportunities through visits, partnerships and exemplary teaching supported by CPD.

We invite authors, poets and storytellers to visit Handsworth to encourage reading for pleasure and develop writing skills.
We have developed a partnership with the local secondary school to offer Guided Reading and Paired Writing projects.
Teachers have attended the National Theatre’s Let's Play CPD to develop creativity and theatre-making in primary schools.

We promote a growth mindset through the support we offer and the questions we ask.

Our teachers use various teaching and learning methods to cater to different learning styles.
In daily lessons, children participate in a range of activities which enable them to practise their English skills. This includes whole-class teaching and reading, small group focused activities and independent work.
We regularly encourage children to edit, improve, share and evaluate their own work and that of their peers as an integral part of each unit of work.

We celebrate each individual child to be confident, curious and ambitious by reflecting and affirming pupil identity in the texts we choose and the context we teach.

All children have the opportunity to experience a wide range of texts, whether in full or as extracts, which are carefully selected by teachers for their quality.
These texts are regularly reviewed, with teachers aiming to ‘refresh’ one book from their list once a term.
We use CLPE’s ‘Power of Reading’ approach to foster a love of reading that goes beyond school. The five key areas covered are:
- Explore it: Questions to develop an awareness of language and vocabulary.
- Illustrate it: Visualisation skills to aid comprehension.
- Talk about it: Book talk to encourage referring to the text to support ideas.
- Imagine it: Thinking beyond the text and linking to real life.
- Create it: Writing in response to a text, developing imagination and creative ideas.

How we Teach Phonics at Handsworth

At Handsworth, phonics is one of the literacy tools we use to teach children to speak, read and write. It is primarily used to teach children to identify the sounds letters make and use this knowledge to read words and write letters that represent the sounds they know.

We use the highly successful ‘Read, Write Inc.’ scheme throughout the school to teach phonics synthetically. This means children will be taught the sounds letters make first, then how to blend or ‘synthesise’ these sounds into words to read them. All staff at Handsworth, including staff in Key Stage 2 have been trained in phonics teaching. This acknowledges that whilst whole class teaching of phonics ends after Year 2 there will be students who will benefit from continued phonics instruction into Years 3,4,5, and 6.

Phonics teaching starts in EYFS at Handsworth with daily 15-minute sessions where students begin to learn the range of graphemes (letters) that represent the 44 corresponding phonemes (sounds) in the English language. Children will read, write and spell words in these sessions to practice a range of literary techniques. These sessions begin as whole-class sessions and, later in the year, are conducted in smaller, streamed groups to ensure the needs of all students are met equitably.

Students then carry this phonic knowledge directly into Year 1, where they will take the next appropriate step in the ‘Read, Write, Inc.’ scheme for their learning. In Year 1, pupils begin to learn that there are a range of different spellings for a phoneme and that a grapheme can be pronounced in different ways (e.g. the ow in cow is different to the ow in crow). This is also taught daily.

In Year 2, pupils’ daily phonics sessions focus more on grammar and spelling rules as their blending skills reach a more fluent level. Children are taught and subsequently utilise spelling rules alongside their developing reading skills to begin to use more sophisticated literary techniques.

From Reception onwards, children will be given two books a week to read at home with their grown-ups. These books support and instil the phonic learning covered in school and are a way to get children’s parents and guardians involved in phonics and reading. Parents or carers can ask their class teacher if they have any questions about how to best support their children with phonics.

We use the Ruth Miskin 'Read, Write Inc Phonics Scheme.

How we teach Spelling at Handsworth

At Handsworth, we are enthusiastic about literacy. We believe it is effective to explicitly teach spelling and provide pupils with opportunities to practice rather than test them.

In Early Years children begin their spelling journey through phonics by learning to sound out and write words in a phonetically plausible way. This means that at the beginning of Reception, words may be spelt unconventionally but may make sense phonetically i.e. ‘Dinosaur’ may be spelt ‘d-igh-now-sor’. This encourages children to use the sounds they know and develops a sense of capability in the child. As pupils progress through the Early Years, they will be taught keywords and begin to learn conventional spellings as a holistic part of their reading and writing journey.

In Key Stage One, children progress through the phonics scheme to learn more complex sounds. They will begin to spell common exception words, learn to spell words with contracted forms and write these words more from memory. This is taught holistically through English and Guided Reading sessions framed by a literacy-rich environment and explicitly through phonics and weekly spelling lists.

In Key Stage Two, children are given phonics-grouped spelling lists to learn weekly, which include words from the spelling lists for their key stage. These are taught in class through early morning learning tasks and English lessons. Children are taught to identify other words that use the same spelling patterns and are encouraged to use weekly spellings in their writing. There are no weekly spelling tests, although teachers may choose to include retrieval quizzes to help children recall spellings from previous weeks.

How we teach Reading at Handsworth

At Handsworth, we understand that reading underpins the whole curriculum and opens up the world to the individual child.

We aim to teach reading to the highest level possible and enable all pupils to become fluent readers. We believe that every child has the capability to be a reader and aim to develop a lifelong love of reading. We model good reading habits, encourage book talk, and choose high-quality literature that reflects the diversity of our school community.

Our reading journey begins in EYFS, where pupils take creative and child-initiated approaches to literacy. This is taught through continuous provision, whole class phonics sessions, group reading and individual reading sessions, as well as a literacy-rich learning environment. In Nursery and Reception, children will be exposed to high-quality texts of diverse genres. As stated in the Early Years curriculum, children will explore reading in an objective-based way as well as having access to stories, poems, non-fiction books and traditional tales in the wider environment. Children in Reception will start to take home reading books that follow our phonics scheme to read with their families and carers. The school and home working together on pupils' reading skills gives them the best opportunity for success.

In KS1, children progress on their learning journey by exploring more complex phonic sounds and applying these to their reading practice. Pupils have guided reading sessions in small groups to examine texts in detail. Teachers choose high-quality texts covering different genres throughout the year that children will investigate over several weeks of learning to explore everything the texts have to offer. They will partake in complex book talk, discuss word meaning and begin to take texts apart to look at inference, prediction and use of language.

In KS2, reading skills are taught in daily guided reading sessions. Pupils further develop their inference and prediction skills and begin to retrieve and summarise during small group carousel activities based on high-quality texts. These sessions allow the teacher to listen to each child read every week. Alongside these lessons, pupils study a wide range of genres in greater depth during daily English lessons. Teachers also read aloud to their class each day from a class book.

The Oxford Owls website has digital versions of the reading books we send home for pupils to read. Please ask your child's teacher if you would like to discuss these books further.