English
Subject Leaders: Ashley Loasby & Karen Roberts
English Intent
At Kettering Buccleuch Academy (Primary) we believe that English is a fundamental life skill. English develops children’s ability to listen, speak, read and write for a wide range of purposes. Children are enabled to express themselves creatively and imaginatively as they become enthusiastic and critical readers of stories, poetry 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. Children use their knowledge, skills and understanding in speaking and writing across a range of different situations. Children aim for our children to write as readers and read as writers.
EYFS and KS1 Synthetic Phonics
At Kettering Buccleuch Academy, we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach reading through
Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Reception and follow the
Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.
Reading in KS2
At Kettering Buccleuch Academy, the Reading Journey is underpinned by the ethos of the teacher being the reading expert. This enables children to be immersed by high-quality extracts, not having a roof put on their learning because of their reading age. The teaching of Reading has been embedded throughout Y3 – Y6 in a whole class format, children are exposed to higher-level vocabulary, listen to the teacher as the expert and unpicking the text through personalised comprehension questions based around the skills being taught. Children are supported through the different stages of reading. Our Reading Journey is as detailed below:
- Deep reading – This is the modelling of reading completed by the teacher. Children have a copy of the text to follow as the teacher reads the focus section. From this, discussion about the text, understanding and author’s style are orally discussed as a class. Any misconceptions in knowledge and vocabulary are addressed. Children, who are not at age related expectation, will have been pre taught this by a Teaching Assistant.
- Meaning and Messages– the journey starts with teacher and children identifying vocabulary they do not understand. This gives children to chance to practice all important dictionary skills and understanding the word choices the author has used. Children will then complete an activity to show their understanding of word choice.
- Comprehension - Children then apply all of their knowledge from the previous sessions to answer comprehension question (which become more challenging) based around what they have read. This is then acknowledged by the teacher and misconception addressed in interventions.
- Class book – Children will be immersed into a class novel (age related text from the book spine). This will be read as a book of enjoyment. Children will have the opportunity to complete a range of activities to full immerse them into the storyline.
Whole School
At Kettering Buccleuch Academy, we understand the importance of sharing stories from which relate to our wider community. We undertint the importance of our children recognising themselves in books being shared with the class. During our daily story time, children are read to by an adult in their class, we aim to promote a wide range of books (short, picture, poetry and non-fiction) , which allows are children to experience the breadth and depth of the world around them, whilst promoting a love for reading ethos.
Year 1
At Kettering Buccleuch Academy (Primary), we pride ourselves on not only having access to a wide range of high-quality fiction and non-fiction texts but also having some fantastic areas for children to enjoy reading alone or with their peers, both in class and out. These are linked with the phonics sounds that the individual child has been taught that week, this will allow them to practise the skills learnt. This is fundamental in the moving to fluent readers at an early age.
Year 2
In Year 2, our children being to make the transitional phase onto reading a range of books. During the autumn term, children are assessed completing a fluency assessment. However, if a child did not pass their Year 1 phonics test, they will continue to embed the phonics sound they are being taught that week, alongside an book to share with an adult.
KS2
Throughout KS2, our individual reading in one to promote the love of reading. Children are able to select a book from their reading range. This is then read with an adult. The adults are trained to monitor the fluency of reading is ay 95%. All adult at KBA complete a running record with every read to ensure 95% accuracy is maintained. This is then logged on our online reading record for parents/ carers to see.
Writing
Writing has a leading place in education and society. A high-quality education in English will teach pupils to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others. All the skills of language are essential to participating fully as a member of society. The overarching aim for English in the national curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong expertise of the spoken and written word.
Our Writing Journey
Contribution of English is other Curriculum Areas
The skills that children develop in English are linked to, and applied in every subject of our curriculum. The children’s skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening enable them to communicate and express themselves in all areas of their work at school.