Why we teach English
We believe that English is at the heart of children’s learning and that an understanding of language will provide access to the whole curriculum. It is our intention that through our teaching of English, pupils will develop skills and understanding in all areas of language which will enable them to become confident speakers, readers and writers and to express themselves confidently and effectively by articulating opinions, ideas and feelings.
It is our aim that all children learn to speak and listen with the confidence and accuracy necessary to articulate feelings, opinions and ideas and with the expression necessary to communicate meaning effectively.
We strive to offer all of our children access to the wonders of quality texts by creating a reading rich environment that instils a love for reading while children to form personal responses with independence and confidence. We aim for all children to read regularly to a high standard across a range of subjects and to confidently discuss books they have read.
Through our curriculum, we aim to provide children with experiences and opportunities to develop their skills to write imaginatively and creatively. We want our children to confidently edit and improve their writing and to adapt their language and style for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences, understanding the opportunities they all have the potential to explore.
At Ravenscroft, we aim to provide purposeful activities for reading, writing and discussion as we believe that skills in these areas are essential to everyday life.
How we teach English
English lessons at Ravenscroft are planned using the Power of Reading and focus on using quality texts as a tool to support and develop both reading and writing skills and to introduce a wealth of new vocabulary. The texts used cover a range of genres and provide opportunities for children to apply reading skills for different purposes such as, extracting information, undertaking research, forming opinions, making links, forming arguments.
English skills are transferred across our curriculum giving children the skills to access all subjects, such as providing them with the reading skills to access reading materials and carry out research, to write up experiments and to recall significant events in History.
We teach the skills of reading (outlined in the National Curriculum and the KS1 and KS2 test domains) in Guided Reading sessions through the use of VIPERS which were created by Rob Smith (The Literacy Shed). VIPERS is an acronym to aid the recall of the 6 reading domains and are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts; Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval, Sequence or Summarise.
In KS2, children apply reading skills in Guided reading sessions using a whole class text. In these lessons, we teach children how to structure responses to different question types modelling the use of sentence stems and oral rehearsal.
At Ravenscroft we follow the Read Write Inc. programme to deliver daily phonics to all children across EYFS and KS1 in order build the foundations for reading. We use Read Write Inc. and Oxford Reading Tree as our core reading schemes. Our children are also encouraged to choose books from the school library to develop their independent reading skills and their love of reading.
To promote a love for reading, we provide opportunities for our children to enjoy books of their choice holding regular book swaps, book fairs, ‘Come Read with Me’ sessions for parents, World Book Day events, playtime reading, reading buddies and reading rewards.