English
As soon as children begin their school journey at St Joseph’s we encourage and inspire a life-long love of reading. We practise the important skills of reading individually, in small groups and with the whole class. Our reading books are arranged to align with each phase of our phonics teaching.
An emphasis upon early reading enjoyment is key, enabling our youngest children to explore literature and decode through synthetic phonics teaching, which continues to build throughout their Primary education and impact positively upon their oracy and spelling knowledge. Throughout the school we are following Jane Considine’s Hooked on Books scheme, which is carried out daily in small groups allowing for group discussion and close monitoring of reading progression by the class teacher.
The children are taught explicit skills to allow them to be successful readers, this allows for pupils to be taught clear strategies including inference, questioning, clarifying, summarising, and prediction and activating prior knowledge.
All children are exposed to a rich and varied reading culture which helps them develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually.
Recommended Reading Lists:-
For more information please click on ‘LoveReadingForSchool’ page:-https://www.lovereading4schools.co.uk/school/10822 Password: StJosMalm
At St Joseph’s we fully immerse each pupil in their writing unit using a ‘Wow’ moment or experience, which will spark their initial creativity and imagination when writing, this complements the writing scheme we follow.
The Write Stuff, created by Jane Considine, is a clear and systemic approach to the teaching of writing, providing a step-by-step framework to convert struggling writers into successful writers.
The Write Stuff is based on two guiding principles; teaching sequences that slide between experience days and sentence stacking lessons. With modelling at the heart of them, the sentence stacking lessons are broken into bite-sized chunks and taught under the structural framework of The Writing Rainbow.
Teachers prepare children for writing by modelling the ideas, grammar or techniques of writing. The high quality modelling enables the children to succeed when they come to do their own independent writing and they love to see their own work regularly celebrated on the wall in the Sentence Stacking. ‘The Write Stuff’ has produced some really incredible writing that the children are proud of.
Below are links to some fantastic resources that can be used to help with writing homework and revision, as well as just for fun! If you find any other brilliant sites that are not on the list, please let us know so we can share them on here for the whole school to use!
Writing Websites:
Crickweb KS1 – https://www.crickweb.co.uk/ks1literacy.html
Crickweb KS2 – https://www.crickweb.co.uk/ks2literacy.html
Topmarks – https://www.topmarks.co.uk/Search.aspx?q=Writing
BBC Bitesize English – https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zv48q6f
BBC – SPaG – https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zhrrd2p
BBC – Creative Writing, Language and Comprehension https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zprrd2p
BBC Teach – Videos and animated series covering a range of areas in English, including Shakespeare and interactive lessons – https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/ks2-english/zbrwnrd
Royal Shakespeare Company Education Zone – https://www.rsc.org.uk/education
The Literacy Shed – https://www.literacyshed.com/home.html
DK Find Out! – https://www.dkfindout.com/uk/english/
Ted Ed – https://ed.ted.com
Phonics Scheme
We use Unlocking Letters and Sounds which was validated by the DfE in December 2021.
We begin teaching phonics in the first few weeks of term 1 in Reception and children make rapid progress in their reading journey. Children begin to learn the main sounds heard in the English Language and how they can be represented, as well as learning ‘Common Exception’ words for Phases 2, 3 and 4. They use these sounds to read and write simple words, captions and sentences. Children leave Reception being able to apply the phonemes taught within Phase 2, 3 and 4.
https://www.st-josephs-malmesbury.wilts.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Actions-for-phase-2.docx
In Year 1 through Phase 5a, b and c, they learn any alternative spellings and pronunciations for the graphemes and additional Common Exception Words. By the end of Year 1 children will have mastered using phonics to decode and blend when reading and segment when spelling. In Year 1 all children are screened using the national Phonics Screening Check. In Year 2, phonics continues to be revisited to ensure mastery of the phonetic code and any child who does not meet age related expectations will continue to receive support to close identified gaps.
For further details please see the Unlocking Letters and Sounds progression: https://www.st-josephs-malmesbury.wilts.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/ULS-Summary-progression.docx
To ensure no child is left behind at any point in the progression, children are regularly assessed and supported to keep up through bespoke 1-1 interventions. These include GPC recognition and blending and segmenting interventions. The lowest attaining 20% of pupils are closely monitored to ensure these interventions have an impact.
Early Reading Scheme
At St Joseph’s we promote a ‘phonics first’ approach and in both our guided reading sessions at school and in the books children take home, texts are very closely matched to a child’s current phonics knowledge so that every child can experience real success in their reading. In these crucial early stages of reading we primarily use books from Ransom Reading Stars Phonics, to ensure complete fidelity to the Unlocking Letters and Sounds progression we follow.
Once children progress beyond decodable texts, they move onto our book scheme so that they can continue to progress in their decoding, fluency and comprehension skills to become avid, expert readers.