Intent

At Thorpe Lea, English is fundamental to the overall development of every child and their ability to access all aspects of the curriculum. As a result, we endeavour to ensure that children develop and foster a lifelong, healthy and enthusiastic attitude towards reading and writing.

Aims of writing at Thorpe Lea:

● Explore high-quality and vocabulary rich texts to stimulate children’s writing;

● Ensure children become profound and confident speakers, readers and writers;

● Provide a range of opportunities for children to write imaginatively, at length and purpose;

● Deliver quality teaching of each of the essential skills (grammar, punctuation, spelling, letter formation, oracy (speaking and listening) and vocabulary acquisition);

● Develop grammatical and text-specific features before applying to an extended piece of writing;

● Use a wide range of resources to allow all learners to recognise their full potential as a writer.

Aims of Reading at Thorpe Lea:

• To enable children to see themselves as a reader and celebrate their success 
• Children to read for pleasure, becoming enthusiastic and reflective readers
• Introduce children to language-rich texts, which link to the wider curriculum and respond to children’s interests
• Children to immerse themselves in a range of opportunities including reading aloud
• Help children to understand the relevance of reading to themselves and their lives
• Equip children with tools to be resilient, independent readers
• Ensure our children have sound phonic awareness and use a phonics first approach to reading

Implementation

At Thorpe Lea, reading and writing is taught daily from Nursery to Year 6. Within the Early Years and Key Stage One, the foundations of early reading and writing is taught through daily, Read, Write Inc phonic lessons. The Read Write Inc scheme is used by practitioners to plan and deliver sessions that are visual, auditory and kinaesthetic and we have invested heavily into training for staff and resourcing including phonetically decodable books for in class and home. Once children come of the Read, Write Inc book band books, we have a large selection of reading scheme and ‘free reading books’ which are used for reading lessons, individual reading and for reading at home.

English lessons are also delivered from Year 1 - 6 daily using our Key Text Approach. These lessons allow children daily access to high quality texts and the children's reading, writing and SPAG skills are developed through these. In addition to this, in KS2, specific reading comprehension lessons are led by the teacher weekly and are linked to next steps in learning. Each week all children visit our school library and are able to borrow a book of their choice. Children are given opportunities to read with adults and at the end of the school day, have the opportunity to listen to a shared class text.

Same day interventions run daily for children who have not been able to grasp the concept of the lesson/ task. More able groups are run to extend and further challenge our more able learners to continue to develop their fluency, comprehension and writing skills. These interventions are run by both learning support assistants and class teachers.

In addition to all of the above, our children are continuously developing their English skills across other areas of the curriculum.

Impact

Monitoring of the teaching and learning of both reading and writing across the school takes place on a regular basis through learning walks, books looks and pupil conferencing. Internal and external moderations are carried out throughout the year to identify children who are yet to make expected progress. This will then support us in adapting and developing our curriculum accordingly. 

A range of methods are used to discover what our children know and understand. Read, Write Inc has its own assessment tools which support adults in allocating children into the most appropriate group. The Development Matters Framework and the Early Learning Goals support teachers in the Early Years to make well informed decisions of children's attainment and next steps. Regular reading and writing assessments in both KS1 and KS2 such as Test Base Reading Comprehension provide teachers with standardised, curriculum linked assessments which evaluate children's understanding of taught concepts and can, in turn, address any misconceptions or gaps in learning. Once this is identified teachers will plan for these to be addressed in the up coming lessons or during tailored interventions.

Our same day interventions allow for immediate impact to take place. Children's misconceptions are identified through questioning and marking, and will be addressed in the same day. If the child has still not understood the concept after the intervention, and needs further support, this will be noted on our 'Same day intervention log and feedback sheet' and further support will be provided the next lesson. If we identify further gaps in learning then tailored interventions will be created to support the learning.