English

At Lancaster Lane, we want to instil a love of reading and promote reading for pleasure throughout the school. Daily story times are timetabled into every day where the teacher reads a quality text to their class for enjoyment.

Pre-school and reception classes each have reading areas, which have a variety of books that can be enjoyed by children. Outdoor reading areas also ensure that children’s love of stories can be transferred into a more natural environment. We create communication friendly spaces, which are language rich and provide opportunities to engage with text within different contexts. Our EYFS follows the synthetic, systematic phonics scheme ‘Red Rose Letters and Sounds’. Pre-school complete phase 1, which develops the foundations for phonics application, ready for when phonemes and diagraphs are introduced in Reception and early reading/writing begins. Both EYFS classes focus on a particular book each half term and share this with parents to aid parental engagement, alongside key vocabulary from the book that will be discussed and modelled in school and can also be followed up at home. Linked books are also selected carefully to enhance learning and are available for children to access daily, as well as read during daily story times.

Children in pre-school are given weekly ‘home reading books’, to share alongside family members at home, to develop a love of reading. In addition to this, families can choose to borrow additional books from our lending library basket, which is available outside the classroom door daily. This is also mirrored in Reception, where children have a lending library trolley available daily to borrow books to share at home. Home reading books are issued based on phonics ability and provide children with opportunities to blend CVC words to read, developing from this to CVCC and beyond. These are tailored to meet the needs of children, and all books are decodable and follow the sequence of phonemes/diagraphs taught through the Red Rose Letters and Sounds scheme. 

In KS1, reading skills are taught through regular guided reading sessions. Here, texts are explored in small, adult led groups based on the children’s needs and abilities and will also incorporate learning from their phonics sessions.  Later in the year, our Year 2 class also access whole class reading lessons to expose them to high-quality texts, questioning and discussions. Reading books are matched to their phonic reading ability which are read with both adults in school, and sent home to read with parents.

In KS2, reading is taught using whole class sessions and individual reading opportunities. Whole class reading exposes all children to a range of high-quality text types, questioning and discussions. Children are given the opportunity to hear modelled reading, explore vocabulary and complete comprehension tasks. Individual reading provides opportunities for the children to focus on key reading skills, target areas for their own improvement and have quality time with an adult. Banded reading books are matched to children based on their ability within word reading and comprehension. These are read with the children by both adults in school and at home.

Reading is the first stage of the writing process and underpins all of our English units. The first week of an English unit is dedicated to reading response and reading analysis to ensure the children have a deep understanding of the vocabulary and structure of a text type. 

Throughout Early Years and KS1, phonics is delivered using the Red Rose Phonics programme. Pupils take part in interactive lessons every day and are grouped according to their needs. Children who are not progressing as expected are quickly identified and intervention is put in place promptly.

Pupils sit a Phonics Screening Check (PSC) at the end of Year 1. For children who do not meet the expected standard in the PSC, phonics intervention sessions as well as their daily phonics lessons will take place in Year 2. They will then re-sit the phonics assessment at the end of Year 2. If a child does not pass the PSC in Year 1 or Year 2, teachers throughout their Key Stage 2 journey are made aware of this to ensure they are accessing further reading support to enable them to be successful readers. 

Please see the Phonics and Early Reading curriculum statement for more information.

In Pre-school, children begin writing skills through strengthening their gross and fine motor skills ready for mark making. Activities such as Dough Disco and Squiggle Whilst You Wiggle support our children in making the first steps into writing.

Reception class use the ‘drawing club’ model as their daily literacy lesson, which provides children with opportunities to develop their understanding of story, as well as begin their early writing journey. Age-appropriate elements of oral rehearsal and kung-fu punctuation are also used, to support development of sentence structure. Early writing opportunities are available both indoors and outdoors through large-and small-scale mark making opportunities. Writing materials are provided in several different areas, to encourage children to make marks for a purpose and develop letter formation/writing skills, alongside scaffolds from Red Rose Letters and Sounds to support this. All children in Reception write at tables, during phonics, drawing club sessions or during independent writing opportunities to support their core strength and develop writing skills. However, when appropriate, children do write whilst in different positions (eg. sat on the carpet, led on the carpet, leaning against a vertical surface etc) which supports their strength in various other areas of their body. 

In Years 1-6, the process of writing is conducted through different phases using strategies from the Lancashire based Talk 4 Writing approach. The children explore a model text through read and response activities, followed by a ‘gathering content’ phase (vocabulary and grammar skills), planning phase, scaffolded write and finally, independent writing. These phases fully emerge the children into the different text types in preparation for writing.

Scaffolded Writing - Scaffolded writing allows teachers to model high quality writing to the children. Pupils will observe the process of writing such as structuring sentences, including key grammar skills and editing at the point of writing. This valuable part of the writing process also allows the children to contribute their own ideas and see how to develop these in writing. Throughout this stage, the children receive effective feedback to inform their future writing.  

Independent Writing - Towards the end of a unit, the children plan their own independent piece of writing using different methods such as ‘chunk the plot’. This piece of writing has no teacher input but children are expected to use vocabulary and grammar they have previously learnt throughout the unit to aid their work. Once completed, children are given the opportunity to edit and improve their writing independently and publish it in a variety of forms (class books, displays, alongside artwork etc…). Writing produced at this stage aids teachers’ assessment of the children.  

Writing Across the Curriculum - We strive to give the children the opportunity to write for a variety of purposes and audiences to give their writing meaning. Setting high expectations of written English across subjects demonstrates the importance of English to the children and makes it relatable to real life contexts in which the children may need to apply these skills in future life. Our curriculum ensures that cross-curricular writing is planned into every topic.   

Vocabulary is considered to be a valuable tool for children in our school and we aim to expose children to new and exciting vocabulary in all areas of study. Children are given opportunities to fully understand new words across the curriculum through a range of strategies including definition, synonym and context activities as well as delving into the etymology of words. This gives them the confidence to use vocabulary correctly and effectively in their writing. Vocabulary words are carefully chosen by class teachers for each half term. They are displayed on our classroom doors, shared within lessons, used in modelled writing, handwriting and spelling activities. Vocabulary lists are also shared with parents for children to practice and consolidate at home, if they wish.

From Years 2 – 6, spelling is taught using the scheme ‘Spelling Shed’. Spelling Shed's approach to spelling involves the relationship between sounds and written symbols as well as using morphology to help spell through meaning. Objectives are covered using a variety of strategies (phoneme maps, syllable breaks, etymology, morphology, close sentences) as well as independent approaches to practicing spellings which children are free to choose and adopt the best methods that work for them. Spelling Shed allows children to practice their spellings interactively through the use of both independent and group online games which they can play in school and at home.  

We believe that children should take pride in their work to raise self-esteem and strive for our pupils to write fluently and legibly by the end of KS2. Therefore, we set high expectations for handwriting and presentation across the curriculum.  We teach letter formation following our school’s progression document, in accordance with the Red Rose Phonics programme, Early Learning Goals 2021 and guidance from the National Curriculum 2014. Letter patters from the Red Rose scheme are used throughout school for the formation of letters. Number patters, linked to Numberblocks, are used to support the formation of numbers. 

In Pre-school, children are introduced to mark making following the program ‘Squiggle Whilst You Wiggle’ to help children develop the muscles and brain connections necessary for writing. Reception children begin explicit handwriting lessons, following on from Squiggle Whilst You Wiggle, starting with lines and shapes, number formation and finally, letter formation.  These sessions follow a consistent structure (gross motor warm up, teach, practice, apply) which enables our pupils to form routines within lessons, reducing cognitive load and making sessions accessible and predictable, especially for our SEND learners.

In KS1 and KS2, along with our handwriting progression, handwriting lessons follow a consistent structure  (warm-up, teach/model, practice, apply) where joins are modelled in isolation, within words and finally, within a sentence.

If needed, intervention sessions are implemented to support children’s difficulties with letter formation and joins. In KS2, we use Bubble Handwriting as a means of supporting children who experience such difficulties. Other strategies may also be used to help support handwriting such as highlighter lines and pencil grips. Although it is very important for teachers to model quality handwriting, we also expose the children to a range of fonts on class displays as children will see different representations in the wider world around them. 

Years 1-6 use the I-Model approach to teach grammar within our English units. Our consistent approach follows the structure, Immerse – Imitate – Innovate – Invent – Improve. Teachers choose grammar objectives best suited to the text type being taught with the expectation that these skills will be evident in the children’s independent writing outcome. For some grammar objectives, the structure of Function/Identify – Collect and Classify – Oral Practice – Improve – Construct, may be used to aid learning. Kung-fu Punctuation is used alongside the I-Model approach to support children’s understanding of where punctuation should go within a sentence. Children orally compose sentences using the grammatical feature and correct punctuation in preparation for independent writing. Some grammar and punctuation objectives may call for more explicit teaching and these will be taught discretely to ensure full understanding of the skill.