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English Curriculum
Guided reading
EYFS
In EYFS, reading is also taught through story-time and Guided Reading sessions, where teachers will provide opportunities for children to practise and consolidate their phonic and reading skills. The children are given opportunities to apply their phonic skills throughout the day during phonics teaching, and independent reading to an adult.
Key Stage 1
In Key Stage 1, structured Guided Reading sessions are taught to develop children’s fluency, reading and comprehension skills. The high-quality texts chosen will be age-appropriate and aim to develop specific comprehension skills. The explicit teaching of comprehension is key to developing confident readers who engage with and understand the text.
Reading aloud is a fundamental reading skill. During reading lessons, prosody will be explicitly modelled to highlight good timing, phrasing, emphasis, and intonation when reading. Research shows strong links between oral reading prosody and general reading achievement.
Opportunities are provided for children to apply taught skills both guided and independently during whole class reading lessons and 1:1 reading with an adult.
Key Stage 2
In Key stage 2 pupils, are taught guided reading through a daily 30-minute reading lesson. Within these sessions, a range of reading skills are taught to the children based on the national curriculum expectations divided up into the 7 content domains. The weekly approach is broken down into key areas of reading: vocabulary, shared reading of a text, guided and independent practice and work on Tier 2 words linked to morphological and etymological understanding. The explicit teaching of fluency is embedded into the guided reading sessions throughout the week.
To find out more about our approach to reading please see the documents below.
Find Out More:
Love of reading:
At Parkland Primary School, we believe that nurturing confident and competent children who have a love of reading is absolutely key to a child’s development and future success. We see reading as the key to unlocking the curriculum and a love of learning. Therefore, we prioritise time for independent reading in school and at home and work hard to ensure that children have access to an engaging text that is well-matched to their age and stage of reading development.
Across the school, we aim for all children to be provided with the opportunity to read with an adult at least once a week to practice and consolidate their reading and comprehension skills. Children who are not reading at ARE will be heard at least three times per week by an adult to help develop their phonic and reading skills.
Each child is provided with a reading folder, a reading book at the appropriate level and a home/school reading journal. Staff and parents will write in the journal when a child has read. Children may also be given phonic sounds, high frequency words or common exception words to practice at home in line with their specific gaps.
PM Benchmarking:
In Key Stage 1 we use PM benchmarking as a tool to assess and monitor the progress children are making with their reading. This assessment is then used to ensure children are on the right level of book and that their reading book is well-matched to their reading ability allowing them to apply what they know and make sustained progress over time.
Accelerated Reader
In Key Stage 2 teachers use the Accelerated Reader programme to monitor and assess the children’s reading ability. Children take a STAR reader test three or four times per year to check their reading progress and ensure they are reading books at the correct ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development). The programme also allows children to take a quiz after reading a book which assesses their level of comprehension of what they have read. This supports teachers in assessing if a child is reading a book at the right level and diagnosing and barriers to good comprehension and progress.
Accelerated Reader Guide for Parents
Class Texts
At Parkland Primary School, we also understand the importance for children to be exposed to range of genres and rich vocabulary. In every year group, classes have a class text which is read to them daily. This exposes all children to a range of high-quality texts and genres which they may not being able to access elsewhere. These books are carefully chosen and feature on our whole school reading spine below.
Writing
Teachers work collaboratively to plan writing learning journeys using progression maps. These ensure content is coherently sequenced in small steps and designed to help learners to remember, in the long-term, the content they have been taught and to integrate new knowledge into larger concepts. The progression maps clearly show which skills need to be taught in each term for each year group.
EYFS:
In Autumn 1, the children begin by working on their letter formation, teacher’s model writing in whole class lessons and children write words and captions with guided support in small groups. During phonics sessions, children will also be expected to write words linked to the phonics sound they are learning.
Independent writing starts in Spring 1, these lessons always consist of an input linked to the topic or story of the week. Teachers will model simple words, captions and sentences depending on stage of year. The children will then work independently to write what was modelled into their books. Once a week each group will work with the teacher for a focused guided writing lesson.
KS1/ KS2:
Writing lessons take place at least four times per week and are planned as an English learning journey. Skills are taught by building on prior learning and linking new learning to things they already know. Each learning journey is planned to have an outcome with a clear purpose and audience so that children can learn to write and make specific grammar, vocabulary and compositional choices based on that outcome.
Teacher plan using a combination of stimulus and approach including oral storytelling, non-fiction units and writing based on a novel or class text and poetry.
For more information on our approach to writing please see the progression maps and writing policy below.