“Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path” (Psalm 119:105).

Intent

Our English Vision

At The Revel, we strive to foster competent communicators and wonderful listeners in an ever-changing world.  Our children are encouraged to articulate their opinions and to formulate their responses in a whole host of ways…from written to spoken to dramatic!  We foster an interest in words, their spellings, sounds and meanings from the very first encounter with them, and our children develop a rich and ever-growing vocabulary.  We enjoy, engage with and understand a range of text types and genres – narrative, poetry, explanation, news report and many more. 

Most of all… our children at The Revel develop the powers of fruitful imagination, inventiveness and critical awareness in all areas of English, they are learners for life!

Implementation

Reading

‘Read widely and well’

This is our mission and our mantra and is brought to life through our whole school quality text-based approach to English teaching. This involves planning an engaging English curriculum using a wide range of high-quality texts for each year group every half-term. We use an English curriculum that is centered around both classic and long-standing much-loved books and novels as well as new and upcoming authors and texts - Sonar Curriculum is vibrant, engaging and nurtures learning through a wide range of beautiful texts.  As a whole school community, we have invested in bringing in a range of quality reading texts which adhere to national book bands – these stretch and challenge our readers all the way to Year 6.   We utilise some whole class sets of books and have the ‘100 challenge read’ texts for KS1, Lower Key Stage 2 and Upper Key Stage 2 in school which children are encouraged to access alongside their colour banded book.  We share ideas about curriculum texts that we are excited about via half termly newsletters, we also ask parents to review our 100 challenge reads and we publicise their reviews and recommendations to our school community.  A new feature of our Reading curriculum is our 'Bedtime book boxes' through which children get to take home and share a wonderful year group appropriate title - by lucky dip in their classroom!  

Writing 

We teach children to write through a carefully planned set of learning sequences in each mixed year phase.  We use  'Cycle A and Cycle B' which is our 2 year cycle of learning.  Children follow a learning pattern of developing a piece of writing over a week or 2 week period,  analysing the quality texts listed on our Sonar Curriculum so that they are clear what each genre looks like first - it's features.  They develop and use a success criteria to make sure that their own writing follows these successful features.  Children learn, use and gradually embed grammar, punctuation and spelling skills which are planned into each learning sequence, and are progressive from one year group to the next - and then they begin to craft their writing.  Teachers model all skills needed to write in daily English lessons and children self and peer assess their writing at stages as they work.  We develop editing skills as children move into KS1 with our trusty 'pink pens'.  The crucial stage of proofreading and editing work is the final stage of each piece of writing.  Children at The Revel are taught to use a 'proof reading hand' to train their writing behaviours to do this 'quick check' of tense, sense, punctuation, grammar, spelling and handwriting, first - once they feel they have completed their first draft.  For KS1, a 'first draft'  might be a caption or sentence - later sentences and paragraphs.  For KS2, longer pieces of work are built.  At all stages, a sense of evaluating their own writing and making edits is very important.  We teach children at The Revel that editing work is about arrangement of sentences, depth of description, cohesion and the 'roundedness' of a piece.  All children 'publish' their work - by the time children are in Year 6, they might do a final copy of many pieces of work in their 'writing journal' whereas in Year 3/4 children may 'publish' a final piece once a half term.  

Phonics and Spelling

We take a robust approach to teaching children to spell here at The Revel through the use of Read Write Inc resources.  In EYFS and Key Stage 1, children are routinely taught in small ability based groups, to recognise sounds, to segment and blend sounds for reading and later, for spelling.  The use of personalised spelling journals in Key Stage 2 enables children to continue to focus on explicit rule teaching and on complex speed sounds to support their spelling and to go on to understand the spellings which ‘break the rules’.  Teachers lay emphasis on the recognition of ‘dots and dashes’ to segment spellings right up to Year 6 and journals record their growing knowledge of this.  Periodic teaching of the National curriculum ‘Common exception words’ takes place in every year group, children are tested on their knowledge of these words regularly but also at specific points twice yearly and their progress assessed with individual lists sent home for learning. 

Impact

At The Revel, we aim for all children to leave Key Stage 2 'secondary ready' and to achieve at least the standards which are expected for the end of Year 6 .This includes the ability to successfully read, using skills such as decoding, reading with fluency and comprehending what they are reading.  From Year 1 to Year 6, children are assessed at 3 assessment points, one each term, by use of NFER national tests, these tests assess children in Reading and Spelling and Grammar.  Data analysis allows us to plan next steps for each child.  At Years 2 and 6, children are assessed using a range of tests to compare them to national standards.  The children will also be able to write successfully for a variety of purposes using a rich range of vocabulary.  Children are assessed each term using the Teacher Assessment Framework for writing, in this way, writing skills are honed and next steps planned.

A further planned impact of our English curriculum is that all children develop and progress successfully as they move through school to the point of moving on at the end of Year 6. Through taking part in a broad and rich curriculum, our children will leave with an appreciation of passion for reading and writing, enabling them to achieve their full potential in the next stage of their education. 

Sonar and Progression:

A sample of a half termly learning sequence can be seen in the 'Sonar and Progression' section.  These samples show very clearly how learning is progressive from year group to year group -

so in Year 1:

And in Year 2

By working on a 2 year cycle, we alternate between year group sequences (so Year 1 and 2 might all be working on a Y2 learning sequence) but Year 1 skills will be referenced on planning so that each child's needs are met objectively.

Reading Enrichment

Our Phonics and English leads work closely together on a programme of Reading Enrichment, some of our enrichment activities are referenced below.  These include dedicated author visit days, whole school initiatives eg family social on ‘Non-fiction November;’ and our annual ‘Take one book’ initiative.  School holiday reading challenges take place frequently which are aimed at families and creating a wide and diverse approach to reading.

Phonics and Spelling

We take a robust approach to teaching children to spell here at Revel through the use of Read Write Inc resources.  In EYFS and Key Stage 1, children are routinely taught in small ability based groups, to recognise sounds, to segment and blend sounds for reading and later, for spelling.  The use of personalised spelling journals in Key Stage 2 enables children to continue to focus on explicit rule teaching and on complex speed sounds to support their spelling and to go on to understand the spellings which ‘break the rules’.  Teachers lay emphasis on the recognition of ‘dots and dashes’ to segment spellings right up to Year 6 and journals record their growing knowledge of this.  Periodic teaching of the National curriculum ‘Common exception words’ takes place in every year group, children are tested on their knowledge of these words regularly but also at specific points twice yearly and their progress assessed with individual lists sent home for learning.