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English
BackReading
Subject vision
At Goose Green, we believe that reading is a fundamental skill that enables all pupils to explore the many paths and opportunities that will be presented to them throughout their lives; it is the gateway to all learning. All members of staff aim to take our children on a journey through reading, from Nursery to Year 6, equipping them with the necessary skills and knowledge required to excel in school and in later life.
Our reading curriculum is designed to instil a life-long love for reading, with the aim that all children will immerse themselves in books regularly, throughout their lives. We believe that reading enables children to explore and understand beyond their immediate experiences and appreciate the world around them. Reading enables pupils to engage with diverse cultures, develop the vocabulary necessary for self-expression and access the wider curriculum.
Our aspirations for our pupils:
- To become lifelong readers
- To read with fluency, accuracy and comprehension across the curriculum
- To read with expression, clarity and confidence
- To engage with and respond to a diverse range of text types
- To develop a broad, complex vocabulary bank
How do children learn Reading at Goose Green?
Phonics
We teach phonics through Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS). It is designed to be used as part of an early learning environment that is rich in talk and story, where children experience the joy of books and language, whilst rapidly acquiring the skills to become fluent independent readers and writers. ELS teaches children to decode by identifying each sound within a word and blending them together to read fluently and to encode by segmenting each sound to write words accurately.
ELS whole-class, daily phonics teaching begins from the first days of Reception. Through the rigorous ELS teaching programme, children build an immediate understanding of the relationship between the sounds they can hear and say (phonemes) and the written sounds (graphemes). Children are regularly assessed and gaps in children’s phonics knowledge is addressed quickly through structured ELS interventions. Children take home a decodable book matched to their phonics knowledge in line with ELS guidance.
VIPERS
From Year 2, pupils are explicitly taught the necessary skills required to comprehend what they read. Through exploration of a range of genres, teachers equip children with the skills to explore and understand authorial intent, focusing on a range of literary devices. To support our multi-faceted approach, we use the ‘VIPERS’ framework, originally developed by Rob Smith of ‘The Literacy Shed’. Our approach teaches the following reading skills:
V - Vocabulary
I - Inference
P - Prediction
E - Explain
R - Retrieval
S - Sequence (Early Years and Key Stage 1) or Summarise (Key Stage 2)
We understand that an extensive and rich vocabulary bank enables our pupils to comprehend a range of texts. We provide many opportunities for children to broaden their vocabulary, through explicit vocabulary instruction across all areas of the curriculum.
To ensure children keep up with the expectations of their year group, we have implemented the ELS Progress programme.
This is designed to plug gaps in children's Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence awareness, with a focus on comprehension. The children are exposed to high quality texts that are closely matched to their reading level and are guided through questions that are linked to the key VIPERS reading skills.
Prosody
Whilst learning to decode words is a fundamental reading skill that develops fluency, it is only one element of reading. Therefore, having phonological awareness and an understanding of spoken language is crucial to developing life-long readers at Goose Green. We want all of our pupils to be able to express themselves confidently and coherently, to voice their opinions and to understand and rationalise other people’s points of view.
One approach to developing prosody within our learners is through ‘echo reading’. Teachers demonstrate through intonation, fluency and expression, how books can come to life through readers and how words can evoke vivid imagery.
Reading for pleasure
Reading for pleasure is at the heart of our reading curriculum. We believe that igniting children's enjoyment and passion for reading, enables them to read a range of texts across the curriculum and within other contexts.
Research shows that reading for pleasure is important for a child’s emotional and social development, provides comfort and a ‘safe place’ for a child and develops their confidence. Children at Goose Green have access to a wide range of high quality texts and are encouraged by all staff to discuss their book preferences e.g. in weekly book recommendation assemblies.
At Goose Green, we believe that reading for pleasure should be promoted at home. Children should read regularly, whether that be reading aloud to themselves, reading to an adult/older sibling, or listening to someone else read. Research tells us that there is a positive relationship between the frequency of reading and improved fluency and stamina, which in turn increases a child’s enjoyment of reading. We encourage all adults to be reading role models.
Writing
Subject vision
At Goose Green, we believe that all children are writers. Our primary objective is to equip children with the fundamental, transferable writing skills that will allow them to express themselves with the written word. We place great emphasis on the link between reading and writing and believe that, if we encourage children to immerse themselves in high quality texts across the curriculum, they will adopt authorial voice within their own writing.
How do children learn Writing at Goose Green?
Teachers captivate pupils’ imaginations through a range of strategies and ‘hooks’ to learning, to infuse excitement and joy when writing. We firmly believe that writing for a purpose enables children to develop their enthusiasm and commitment to the subject. One of the most valued steps within our writing curriculum is that the children are presented with ample opportunity to plan, draft, review and edit their learning, making their own suggestions and those to support their peers.
Our writing curriculum is meticulously planned so that each year group is exposed to a range of genres and key writing skills, which progressively become more challenging as their writing journey continues through Goose Green.
We believe that children should be equipped with a vast vocabulary bank. Teachers carefully plan for children to learn ambitious words across the curriculum, with a particular focus on Tier 2 vocabulary (words that are useful across multiple topic and subject areas). Children are presented with a range of opportunities to apply taught vocabulary, through oral rehearsal, retrieval quizzes and written outcomes.
The explicit teaching of handwriting, spelling, and grammar forms an integral part of our approach to ensure that children grasp the conventions of effective writing. We firmly believe that every child should take pride in the presentation of their learning, fostering a sense of ownership and responsibility.
At the start of a child’s writing journey in Early Years, we recognise that children develop at different rates and in a non-linear fashion. Alongside our focused writing sequences and in order to underpin our writing curriculum, children are given daily opportunities to develop their fine and gross motor skills, develop their communication and language through engaging play environments and high quality interactions with staff. Thoughtful consideration about exciting real life experiences is given so that children are inspired to write.
Throughout their writing journey, pupils who require additional support, particularly children with SEND, are provided with a range of devices to support them in accessing the writing curriculum, such as writing frames, sentence stems, vocabulary banks and software to aid transcription.
By the end of a child’s writing journey in Year 6, children will be skilled enough to sustain writing at speed and with stamina. They will be deliberate and conscious writers, who will have developed their own style of writing, finding joy in their ability to manipulate grammatical features, vocabulary and punctuation, to achieve desired effects.
Handwriting
At Goose Green, in order to develop a fluent and legible handwriting style, we use the Nelson Handwriting programme. It ensures careful progression from pre-writing patterns to the development of an individual style across Years 3 to 6. The programme provides a clearly structured approach to the technical aspects of writing (letter formation, basic joins, printing, speedwriting and slant).
Spelling
Learning to spell begins in the Early Years and Year 1 through the teaching of phonics using Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS). You can find out more information about our approach to phonics in the Reading section above.
When teaching spelling in Year 2, children continue to apply the phonetic knowledge taught in EYFS and Year 1, through a programme called ELS Essential Spelling, which is a continuation of ELS. ELS Essential Spelling provides children with the opportunity to revise the code they already know (from Reception and Year 1) by looking at grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs). We understand the importance of reading to underpin spelling and that is why ELS Essential Spelling continues to provide children opportunities to read within each spelling lesson. The language mapping skills acquired by reading support and underpin encoding. Exposure and repetition are key to enabling children to become successful spellers.
In Years 3 to 6, spelling is taught using the Nelson Spelling programme, which provides consistent practise of teaching children strategies to spell, through looking at sound patterns (phonics), suffixes, prefixes and memorising words. The programme closely links to the National Curriculum's expectations of the words children should learn to spell by the end of Key Stage 2.
Oracy
Subject vision
At Goose Green, we understand that spoken language is fundamental to developing knowledge and understanding. In order to produce confident, eloquent speakers, children need ample opportunity to express themselves verbally. Our main focus within speaking and listening here at Goose Green is to equip our children with the skills required and confidence to be successful, well-rounded citizens.
How do children learn this at Goose Green?
We place strong emphasis on a child’s ability to listen and participate in discussions. We teach children to give well-structured descriptions, explanations and narratives for different purposes, including for expressing feelings. Through poetry lessons, debates, performance, role-play and presentations, the children develop oracy, which in turn nurtures social interaction and develops empathy and understanding amongst our pupils.
How do we know what children have learned in English?
- Questioning
- Pupil Learning Reviews
- Learning walks
- Quizzing and retrieval practice
- Performances and presentations
- Feedback and marking
- Progress in books matches the curriculum intent
- Summative and Formative Assessment
- Internal and external moderation
