English
Like the rest of our curriculum at Wynyard, English teaching is creative, highly engaging and challenging in order to develop a lifelong love of learning and ensure all children achieve their full potential. Lessons are planned around class texts or novels or are linked to the exciting topics that take place across all year groups.
Our English Curriculum
Reading is at the heart of our English curriculum and we believe in developing a love of reading for all pupils in order to support them across all subjects across the curriculum. Children in school have an extremely positive attitude to reading and our school library, which is open every lunchtime for pupils to access, is often full of children with their noses buried in books or excitedly discussing books they have read or suggesting texts to others!
Our reading leaders help promote a love of reading across school and are involved in developing ideas of how we can develop reading across school. They recently helped fundraise during our ‘World Book Day’ to purchase school packs and books through Unicef and Save the Children for children around the world.
Staff in school are passionate about reading and use high-quality texts linked to topics and themes to engage children in a literary rich curriculum and use the class texts and novels to creatively explore a range of writing genres. Every class in school has a designated reading area, where children can access a range of both fiction and non-fiction texts to spark their imagination.
Our teaching of reading begins right down in Nursery where are youngest pupils learn to explore text structure through listening to stories and developing their own oral storytelling skills. We also have weekly phonics sessions in Nursery where children are taught the skills needed to be successful in phonics as they progress, as well as introducing letter sounds. Daily high-quality phonic sessions continue into Reception and Year 1 using the Read, Write, Inc program, which aims to ensure children rapidly learn to read and write.
Throughout school, as well as word reading, we focus on the comprehension skills needed for pupils to understand and be able to discuss and analyse texts. Our reading symbols ensure that children know the skills they are using when reading and understanding a text.
Across School, reading development is promoted through a book-banded reading scheme. Each book band includes a range of texts, including fiction, non-fiction and poetry, from Oxford Reading Tree and Pearson publications. Children read to school staff regularly and will bring home a book to practise their reading skills from the relevant book band. Books will be accompanied by your child’s reading record and we encourage parents to complete this to provide feedback to staff within school. Children in Key Stage 2 also have a second reading record in which they can respond independently to the texts they read. In addition to the book banded books, children have access to Bug Club online reading material.
Our reading activities feed into high-quality writing opportunities covering a wealth of genres. Teachers aim to provide purpose for writing and children across school have enjoyed using the Read, Write, Perform structure. The creative teaching sequences planned for pupils allow them to make meaningful links and enable them to use grammar, vocabulary and punctuation creatively. Our high-quality marking and feedback ensures children know where to go next with their writing and ensures they are continually challenged on an individual basis.
Spelling in school is taught daily using the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 method, which corresponds to the number of minutes spent on spelling across the week. Regular short sessions ensure children are continually practising taught words in school. Children can access Spelling Shed at school and at home and we have a weekly competition across school. One of the highlights of the year is our fiercely competitive Spelling Bee! Last year, it took us almost 2 hours of knock-out rounds to find our champion and the final 10 children enjoyed an afternoon of bowling and ice-cream as a reward.