Walworth Primary School

English

Reading & Phonics Intent

At Walworth School we aim to ‘significantly improve the quality of all our children’s lives’ delivering a rich and varied curriculum that meets the requirements of the National curriculum whilst developing the key curriculum drivers we have identified:

Knowledge & Skills
Emotional Awareness
Citizenship
Independence
Life experiences and Understanding

Our curriculum drivers shape our curriculum breadth. They have been developed from an exploration of the backgrounds of our pupils, our beliefs about high-quality education and our values. They are used to ensure we give our pupils appropriate and ambitious curriculum opportunities. We recognise that many of our children have had limited exposure to literature. We therefore plan to offer them wide and varied opportunities to develop their cultural capital. Cultural capital gives our pupils the vital background knowledge required to be informed and thoughtful members of our community who understand and believe in British values.

At Walworth Special School, we value reading as a key life skill, and are dedicated to encouraging and enabling our pupils to become lifelong readers. We believe that reading is the cornerstone for the whole curriculum and mastering this skill is key for success. Many children starting at Walworth Special School may be reluctant readers who are reading below age related expectations. We therefore offer a personalised curriculum that identifies and fills any gaps in knowledge, teachers relevant decoding and comprehension skills for the level that a child is currently at, and enables them to become a confident reader. In doing so, our aim is to accelerate reading progress for all children so they can fulfil their reading potential to become independent readers and therefore independent learners. The development of this knowledge will enable our pupils to be active participants in society and therefore become good citizens. Teachers offer children wide and varied opportunities to immerse themselves in books (fiction, non-fiction and poetry) that they would otherwise not necessarily have access to and thus help foster a love of books.

Reading & Phonics Implementation

Phonics:
Children in Reception and Year 1 receive daily phonics lessons using Read Write Inc (a government approved SSP scheme). This is delivered above and beyond daily English lessons. Children in year 2, Year 3 and Year 4, who continue to benefit from phonics teaching, receive daily phonics interventions using Read Write Inc. Children in years 5 and 6 who continue to benefit from phonics teaching receive daily intervention using Read Write Inc’s Fresh Start program.
Due to the complexity of the individual needs of the children attending Walworth Special School, teachers have the flexibility to either run these intervention programs in small groups or as one-to-one sessions. By giving teachers this flexibility, they can better meet the needs of individual pupils in their class.

Reading:
Individual reading: At Walworth Special School, all children are heard reading on a daily basis. Children who receive Read Write Inc lessons or interventions have Read Book Bag Books at their individual level. These only contain sounds which the children have been taught, so fluency and confidence in reading can be built up over time. Children who receive Fresh Start interventions read the Fresh Start anthologies. Again, these only contain sounds which the children have been taught, so fluency and confidence are again built up over time.

Children who no longer require phonics teaching read Oxford reading tree books which are carefully matched to the individual child’s reading ability and offer a breadth of genre to widen children’s reading experiences.

Reading lesson: Teachers plan and implement one whole-class reading lesson each week as part of their English lessons. The lessons focus on one area of knowledge or a development of a reading skill linked to the National Curriculum. Content of the lesson is differentiated to meet individual children’s needs.

Class Novel: All classes have selected a class novel, which is, where possible, linked to a theme or to the wider curriculum. Class novels are sequenced throughout the school to ensure that all children are exposed to age appropriate vocabulary and sentence construction regardless of their individual reading ability. The chosen book is usually read by the teacher to the class. In doing so, it removes any barriers from accessing the book and helps foster a love of books, stories and reading. In these sessions teachers are facilitating an ethos that allows pupils to ‘become lost in the book’.

Additional Intervention: Whilst the majority of children will master decoding by using a synthetic phonics program, we acknowledge that for some children this may not be possible. Children who are not making progress using Read Write Inc alone are offered an alternative intervention program to support reading using Toe-by-Toe. This will increase the number of words that children can read on sight using a whole word approach.

Reading across the curriculum: Within the wider curriculum, reading is a priority to ensure children apply their reading skills whilst also developing comprehension and gaining subject knowledge through non-fiction based texts. Walworth School is currently creating a new school library that will hold a wealth of non-fiction texts to support the curriculum and enhance children’s individual interests.

Reading & Phonics Impact

Through the systematic teaching of phonics and discrete teaching of reading skills, our aim is that children will leave Walworth Special School as confident readers who fulfil their individual reading potential to the maximum of their ability.

Reading is measured using the statutory assessments at the end of Key Stage One and Two. These results are measured against the reading attainment of children nationally. Attainment in phonics is measured by the Phonics Screening Test at the end of Year 1.

Because learning is a change to long-term memory, it is impossible to see impact in the short term. We do, however, track progress over time to evaluate the impact of our practice. This means that we look at the practices taking place to determine whether they are appropriate, related to our goals and likely to produce results in the long run.

Formative assessment is used to help teachers plan progression and meet the individual needs of children. Teachers use an assessment tracking tool (iASEND) to track progress through the curriculum. This relates to the National Curriculum Programme of Study for Reading. This in conjunction with work samples and lesson observations will enable the subject lead to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of our curriculum.

Alongside this, summative assessments are taken termly using Headstart reading comprehension tests, thus allowing triangulation between formative assessment, ongoing assessment in daily reading and summative tests to give a broad and balanced picture of a child’s progress.

Children who are accessing phonics intervention will be assessed on a half termly basis by the school reading leads. This will allow close matching of children to groups as they progress through the schemes.

Children who are accessing the Oxford Reading Tree are assessed and monitored using the Oxford Reading Criterion to ensure children progress through the levels at their accurately at their individual pace.

We firmly believe that reading is the key to all learning and so the impact of our reading curriculum goes beyond the results of assessments. Developing reading allows children to access all areas of the curriculum and leads to a world of discovery both in school and beyond. We give all children the opportunity to enter the magical worlds that books open up to them, through their own reading and reading as a class. This helps develop and foster an appreciation for the enrichment reading can provide and strengthens individual’s enjoyment of reading.

Writing Intent

Knowledge and skills
Emotional awareness
Citizenship
Independence
Life experiences and Understanding

Our curriculum drivers shape our curriculum breadth. They have been developed from an exploration of the backgrounds of our pupils, our beliefs about high-quality education and our values. They are used to ensure we give our pupils appropriate and ambitious curriculum opportunities. We recognise that many of our children have had limited exposure to writing. Cultural capital gives our pupils the vital background knowledge required to be informed and thoughtful members of our community who understand and believe in British values. This has a direct impact on ensuring that our children are prepared for adulthood.

At Walworth Primary School we endeavour to create a love for the English language. Writing is a key skill in life and we want every child to leave Walworth Primary enjoying writing, and writing at their highest level possible. We recognise that each child has their own starting point upon entry to our school, and progress is measured in line with those starting points to ensure every child can celebrate success. As a result of pupil’s previous experiences with writing the majority of the children who join Walworth Primary School are disengaged with the writing process. The primary aim of the curriculum is to tackle such barriers, build confidence, re-engage pupils and allow them to like and begin to enjoy writing. Once this is achieved, we build on this to ensure children leave Walworth Primary with the skills to:

Think creativity and use imagination effectively;
Develop a varied bank of vocabulary;
Acquire strategies to become independent learners in English (spelling rules and patterns and how to tackle unfamiliar words).
Present their ideas to each other by talking, being able to elaborate and explain themselves clearly;
Structure and organise their writing to suit the genre they are writing and include a variety of sentence structures
Re-read and edit their writing so every piece of writing they produce is to the best of their ability.

In doing so we will provide children with the knowledge to be independent learners. Children will be able to use this knowledge moving forward to help them play an active role in the wider society and enable them to become good citizens.

Our Writing Curriculum aims to develop writing skills that will enable children to access the other subjects within our broad and balanced curriculum, and give them the knowledge and skills that will promote lifelong learning.

Writing Implementation

The English curriculum is organised so that all children are exposed to a wide range of genres for their writing. These Genres are mapped across year groups to ensure work is sequenced and progressive. Teachers use a wide variety of teaching techniques and resources to motivate and inspire our children. These include: talk for writing, use of a class novel, video stimuli, educational visits, cross-curricular links and visiting authors amongst others. Many children attending Walworth School have relatively limited life experience and by linking writing to these stimuli, it provides children with context, vocabulary and ideas from which they can be creative.

Grammar and Punctuation: Grammar and punctuation skills are taught at academic ability rather than year group expectations. Where possible, grammar and punctuation knowledge and skills are taught through the genres of writing that are being studied. By linking it to the genre, children see language in context and become more connected with the intended writing outcome. Alongside this, teachers are able to personalise learning to tackle individual gaps in knowledge, thus accelerating writing progress.

Spellings: Children are regularly assessed using the Vernon spelling assessment to provide a detailed spelling age. Children are subsequently grouped, and spelling rules taught that match and challenge their academic level. Children complete daily spelling practise and are subsequently tested on a weekly basis.

Handwriting: Handwriting is taught weekly through The Earth Programme to develop the fine motor skills needed to write and then in small groups target individual needs.

Writing Impact

We use lesson observations to see if the pedagogical style matches our depth expectations.

Formative assessment is used to help teachers plan progression and meet the individual needs of children. Teachers also use an assessment tracking tool (iASEND) to track progress over time. This relates to the National Curriculum Programme of Study for Writing. Work scrutiny and lesson observations enable the subject lead to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of our curriculum.

Our Writing curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. Teachers continually assess writing and children’s termly progress is recorded and monitored to ensure progress against their personalised targets. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum against the following outcomes:

Pupils will enjoy writing across a range of genres
Pupils of all abilities will be able to succeed in all English lessons because work will be appropriately differentiated
Pupils will have a wide vocabulary that they use within their writing
Pupils will have a good knowledge of how to adapt their writing based on the context and audience