English
We believe that the development of spoken language, reading and writing build the foundation of every child’s learning. We aim to equip every child with opportunities to communicate through both speech and written form fluently in any medium or situation.
We appreciate the importance of the spoken language in the development of children across the whole curriculum and especially how it underpins the development of reading and writing. We actively encourage opportunities for talk including talk partners, talk for writing, presentations and drama. We also encourage our children to clearly explain their thinking and reasoning in all subject areas.
We recognise that synthetic phonics offers our children the best and most direct route to becoming skilled, fluent readers and writers. At WTPS we have adopted aspects of the Read Write Inc. programme in order to deliver systematic phonics teaching and a progressive reading scheme from the very beginning of their schooling.
At WTPS, we aim to foster a love of reading that lasts a lifetime. We immerse children in a rich range of reading genre, encouraging children to delve beyond the words and develop exploratory book talk. We want children to enjoy reading for pleasure by promoting regular use of the library, paired reading across key stages, listening to adults modelling reading and participation in activities such as World Book Day and author visits.
We aim to equip our children to be able to write in a variety of contexts, purposes audiences and genres. We aim to make writing an enjoyable experience by ensuring the children write for a meaningful purpose. We use interactive learning walls, role play, dramatisation techniques, debates, film clips, music, photography, iPad software and inspiring books to explore, enrich and engage our children in the writing process. Underpinning successful writing is accurate spelling, punctuation and grammar. Daily word work sessions provide opportunity for discrete practice of these crucial skills. Children are grouped according to their needs, following the Read Write Inc. Get Spelling programme before moving on to focus on grammar.
We believe that a fluent and legible handwriting style empowers children to write with confidence and creativity. We teach handwriting through an interactive and practical handwriting programme called Penpals, that develops a clear progression of skills from the early development of gross and fine motor skills to confident letter formation and accomplished joins.
For detailed information about the various aspects of our English curriculum, see the pages below which set out the intent, implementation and impact of the curriculum in each of the key areas:
We held a ‘Phonics and Reading’ workshop for parents in the Autumn term and the following downloads provide some helpful information: