English

National Curriculum

Teacher Assessment Frameworks at the end of Key Stage 1

Early Years Long Term Progression Planning

Nursery-Literacy-Progression-Map.pdf

Reception-Literacy-Progression-Map.pdf

Cirrus Trust Long Term Progression

CPAT-Progression-Map-for-english reading

CPAT-Progression-map-for-english-writing

Year One Medium Term English Planning

Year-1-English-medium-term-planning-autumn

Year-1-English-medium-term-planning-springYear-1-English-long-term-planning-summer

Year Two Medium Term English Planning

Year-2-English medium-term-planning-autumn-1

Year-2-English medium-term-autumn-2

Year-2-English medium-term-planning-spring-1

Year-2-English medium-term-planning-spring-2

Year-2-English medium-term-planning-summer-1

Handwriting Policy

Handwriting-policy

Subject Lead: Miss Holly McGowan

At Stanley Park Infants’, we value reading as a key life skill. By the time children leave us, they should be confident selecting and reading a wide range of material and enjoy regularly reading for pleasure. Our readers are equipped with the tools to tackle unfamiliar vocabulary and material. They can recommend books to their peers and enjoy reading a wide range of genres, including non-fiction. Children enjoy participating in discussions about books and learn many off by heart. 

We use a variety of reading materials and schemes (including Scholastic book bands, Song Birds, Ditty books, Bug Club, Cracking Comprehension and class Kindle books) to support children with their reading. 

How we teach Reading 

We teach reading in several ways. Reading lessons will always include: 

• Opportunities to read for pleasure. 
• Phonics in small groups or interventions. 
• Storytime timetabled for fifteen minutes a day, at least three times a week. 
• Regular, open ended discussions about stories and books. 
• Opportunities to read and discuss a wide read of genres including poetry and non-fiction. 
• Specific teaching of reading comprehension skills including answering retrieval and inference questions – a program called Cracking Comprehension is used in Year 2.

We also have a number of reading enrichment activities, including: 

• Visits from authors and poets throughout the school year. 
• Celebrations for World Book Week including ‘Books Before Bedtime’, competitions and lots of amazing costumes!

In addition, 1:1 reading is put in place for children that need extra practise. Books that the children take home are carefully chosen to match the children’s interests and their level of fluency.   

Reading for pleasure at SPIS 

Reading for pleasure is highly promoted at SPIS and children enjoy reading a wide range of texts. Each class displays the book they are currently reading on their classroom door and this builds up to become a library of texts they have read throughout the year.  

Learning Environment

At Stanley Park Infants' we pride ourselves in our stimulating and immersive learning environment to enhance children's love of stories and encourage them to grow up into lifelong readers. Above shows some photographs of our reading area's to give children a calm and cosy place to enjoy books with their peers. Children are able to choose from a wide range of fiction and non-fiction books, including picture books, chapter books, short stories, poetry books, fact books, science magazines and many more.

'Handa's Surprise' by Eileen Browne is the focus story in Year 1 in the Autumn term and Year 2 read 'Where The Wild Things Are' by Maurice Sendak. Children are Memory Masters learning these stories inside out and these are key texts for cross curricular learning.

Book Week

Each year at SPI we have a special week dedicated to our love of reading to share and promote reading for pleasure among our children. This year our theme was 'Rhythm and Rhyme' with a focus on the author Julia Donaldson. We began our week with an exciting assembly, discussing our favourite types of books, finding out why Julia Donaldson's stories are special, what activities we would be doing this week! The children were thrilled to hear the main focus was Julia Donaldson as she is a very popular author and they could name lots of her book titles and characters. 

To promote a love of reading we started the week with a book carousel in our year groups where the children could hear a range of Julia Donaldson stories. The children visited each of the teachers and teaching assistants in their classrooms to listen and read along to books such as 'Paper Dolls', 'Zog', 'The Gruffalo' and 'The Singing Mermaid'.

Throughout the week classes were able to participate in a character scavenger hunt as lots of Julia Donaldson's characters had escaped their stories and were hiding around our school! We also had a dress up day where we could come to school dressed as our favourite book character and share our favourite stories with our friends. The teachers all dressed up as different Julia Donaldson characters too!

Our biggest celebration in Book Week is always Books Before Bedtime. Children were invited back to school in the evening in their pyjamas to listen to some bedtime stories with their teachers whilst enjoying some treats and chocolate milk. Then our teachers put on a show of a well known story, this year we chose 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears'. It was such a special event and always lots of fun. 

Reading communities: 

·         Participation in local reading competitions including the summer reading challenge. 

·         Visits to the school library every half term. 

·         Book fairs every term- children are timetabled in for browsing sessions. 

·         Access to their teachers reading stories on the school website. 

·         Participation in World Book Week dress up and enrichment events based on the national theme. 

·         Reading buddies- teaming up older and younger classes to share favourite books together. 

Reading environments and choice: 

·         An engaging, clearly labelled, tidy book corner with a range of classic and new, high-quality fiction and non-fiction texts. 

·         Advice on how to choose a book that they will like and exposure to new authors and genres.   

·         Time every week to choose a book and read for pleasure. 

·         Dedicated time each day where an adult will read to them. 

·         Time each week to read to an adult and other children in the classroom. 

·         Daily opportunities to engage in quality book talk. 

Author visits/ Workshops: 

·         Regular author/ storyteller visits- every child will access at least one author event per year. 

Teacher Commitment: 

·         Teachers who have regular training sessions and are kept up to date with pedagogical developments. 

·         Enthusiastic teachers with good knowledge of children’s books and enjoy participating in book talk. 

·         Teachers who are motivated and participate wholeheartedly in reading enrichment activities such as World Book Day. 

·         Teachers who model the love of reading!

Let us read to you!

Listen to some of the SPIS team read some books for World Book Day. We love to share stories everyday and these are some videos recorded during school closure so children at home could enjoy a book with their teachers. 

Subject Lead: Miss Holly McGowan

At Stanley Park Infants, we believe that for children to become confident and fluent readers and writers, phonics needs to be taught using a systematic and structured phonics programme. 

Research shows that when phonics is taught in a structured way, starting with the easiest sounds and progressing through to the most complex, it is the most effective way of teaching young children to read. DfE, 2013. 

Our phonics lessons are delivered by highly skilled practitioners using the Read Write Inc systematic synthetic phonics programme. We ensure coverage of all phonemes as stated within RWInc framework. We provide engaging, interactive and practical daily phonics lessons for all children in EYFS and KS1. Our phonics lessons follow a four-part lesson structure and teaching sequence (review - teach - practise - apply) which promotes independence, resilience and success in all our learners. 

In Nursery, we begin learning early phonics skills with the main focus of developing children's speaking and listening skills. Through a range of practical activities, games, songs, stories and rhymes our children will explore environmental and voice sounds, rhyme, rhythm and alliteration. By the end of the year, we aim for all children to be confident in the skills of oral segmenting and blending in preparation for phase two. 

In Reception, children begin learning phonemes in Set 1 of RWInc and are taught the rhyme for each phoneme and the corresponding graphemes (e.g. 'd dinosaur', 'f flower'). They also learn how to form each grapheme and phoneme with the handwriting rhyme (e.g. f - 'down the flower and give it a leaf'). Children learn to blend these phonemes together to read simple words. They are also taught how to segment words into their sounds when spelling (e.g. c-a-t, b-e-ll, s-o-ck). When the children are confident in Set 1, they can then move on to Set 2 and 3 phonemes. In this phase they learn that sounds can be represented by two or three letters - digraphs and trigraphs (e.g. f-or-k, h-igh). They continue to practise segmenting and blending to read and spell words. 

At the end of Reception and the beginning of Year One, our children will focus on recapping phonemes taught in Reception. No new phonemes or graphemes are learnt in this phase, rather children are taught to read and spell more complex words such as those that contain adjacent consonants (e.g. trip, sting), compound (e.g. sunflower) and multisyllabic words. Throughout Year One children will deepen their understanding of grapheme-phoneme correspondence and developing their awareness of phonemes spelt in different ways. During this phase they will be introduced to alternative pronunciations and phonemes for the same graphemes (e.g. 'ow - brown cow' and 'ow - blow the snow'). They will also learn about phoneme families including new graphemes for phonemes that they are already familiar with (e.g. 'ay - may I play?','ai - snail in the rain' and 'a-e - make a cake'). 

Towards the end of Year One and in Year Two, there is a greater emphasis on word specific spellings and the expectation is that children will become fluent readers and accurate spellers. Through explicit lessons children learn spelling rules which each have a visual card and rhyme (e.g. 'you can't have an e with an ing'). These include adding suffixes (-est, -ly, -ful, -ness, -ment, -ing) and prefixes (un-, im-, dis-, re-) to words. They are also taught the rules for making plurals and how to spell homophones (e.g. blue/blew, see/sea). 

At SPIS, we also model these strategies in shared reading and writing both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. We have a strong focus on the development of language for our children because we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects. 

How we teach Phonics 

At SPIS we 

• Teach children that phonics helps us to read and write. 
• Use the Read Write Inc scheme to teach the phonemes and graphemes involved in phonics, including the associated pictures and rhymes. 
• Include an active element to all lessons that ensures participation for all learners. 
• Teach Phonics in small groups which are streamed from the end of Reception. 
• Regularly assess children’s phonics knowledge to inform our planning and teaching. 
• Use decodable books that are linked to their phonics knowledge so that children can directly apply their new knowledge and phonic skills at an appropriate level. (We use books from a range of schemes such as Oxford Songbirds, Ruth Miskin, Ditty books). 
• Invite all parents to attend phonics, reading and writing workshops to support their children with the development of their child’s phonics skills. 

How can I support my child at home?

• We encourage daily reading and reading for pleasure.
• Encourage your child to use the Read Write Inc rhymes to remember the phonemes they have learnt and how to form their letters.
• Practise segmenting and blending a range of words with your child to help their fluency in decoding texts. 
• Ask your child questions related to the story to check their comprehension and understanding of the text. 

Reading Books

From Reception we ensure that children take home a reading book or ditty (a4 card containing phonemes and words) that closely matches their current phonics attainment. Teachers and Teaching Assistants match books to children's needs through careful observation, assessment and monitoring. This includes using the Ruth Miskin phonics bands assessment, key words assessments and using past Phonics Screening Check papers. Children are also assessed using our benchmarking kits to match their reading attainment, including comprehension skills, to a coloured reading book. It is expected that children can read their phonetically decodable Read Write Inc book or ditty independently and can read their coloured reading book with some adult support. Children may also take home a reading for pleasure book from our school library. Parents are invited to attend phonics and reading workshops to support their children with the development of their early reading and phonics skills. 

Subject Lead: Miss Holly McGowan

At Stanley Park Infants’ School, we strive to ensure that every child is a confident and fluent writer. As writing is a key life skill, we promote daily writing opportunities so that children can successfully write for a range of audiences and purposes. 

How we teach Writing 

Our writing learning is directly linked to the books that we are reading in class. Children will learn a story ‘inside out’ (off by heart), using talk for writing actions to help them. Writing lessons are then based on this story, including re-telling the story, re-imaging the story (using the structure but changing the plot slightly) or using the story as a springboard for different writing styles including character descriptions, letter writing and poetry. Early writing is heavily phonics based and children are taught to apply their phonics knowledge to spell words. Children are also taught the basic components of a sentence including capital letters, finger spaces and full stops. These clear success criteria are shared with the children throughout the lesson and are rehearsed using actions so they know what will make their writing successful. Imagination is encouraged and harnessed to write descriptively and children are exposed to a vocabulary rich environment which is reflected in their writing. 

In Key Stage 1, writing is taught in a cyclical way following the analyse, plan, write, edit progressions. Before writing themselves, children are given the opportunity to analyse a successful piece of writing, finding the success criteria, before planning their own. They then complete an independent piece of writing and then edit and up-level their work. Children are provided with opportunities to read or perform their writing, publish their writing and read other’s writing. Alongside this, ‘sentence of the day’ lessons allow explicit teaching of grammar rules, vocabulary and up-levelling skills. Children are encouraged to be ‘word collectors’ and use interesting words in their writing. Children are often given a purpose for their writing, such as writing a letter to a local MP, which helps to motivate children and provide a context.  

Handwriting and spelling are key components of writing and this is taught alongside writing lessons. Cursive handwriting following the Read Write Inc handwriting rhymes is taught from Reception and regular opportunities to practise cursive letters and letter joins are provided. All spelling rules are taught in individual lessons and displayed on flashcards and revisited, mirroring the approach used for phonics teaching and learning.  

Writing is celebrated at SPIS and regularly shared with classmates. Children are selected at random to share their writing and children often swap books and offer praise and advice to their peers. Children are also encouraged to look back at their previous writing and are given time to reflect on the progress they’ve made. Any ‘WOW’ pieces of writing are photocopied and sent home to share with their family.  

Immersive writing

At SPIS we pride ourselves in planning creative, immersive writing lessons with a hook to draw children into a narrative to scaffold and inspire their writing. Recently, a ‘hurricane’ hit the Year 2 section of the school building. Children entered school on a Monday morning and couldn’t believe their eyes when they walked into their classrooms. There was caution tape across the door to warn children of the dangers inside; tables, chairs, trays and resources were all over the place and everywhere was a mess. Windows were wide open, leaves had blown in creating a mess on the carpet and the electricity wasn’t working! Mr D’Souza and Mr Wallace completed a safety check and came to say that it was safe to tidy away. He also asked Year 2 to write a newspaper report to describe the events from that morning. Year 2 loved being be to write about an event they had experienced, take a look at our photos of the morning and some of our excellent writing.