English at Yattendon

English

Our vision for Yattendon is to deliver a high quality English curriculum which fosters a love of reading, writing and discussion and provides our pupils with the tools they need to participate fully in the real world.  We want all pupils to be confident and competent in reading, writing and spoken language skills which they can successfully apply in their everyday life.

We want our pupils to speak clearly, to convey their ideas fluently and confidently and to ask questions.  We value the importance of using quality texts as a focus of our English teaching and we strive to create life-long readers, encouraging the pupils to read for pleasure and to read widely.  Our engaging curriculum provides a range of opportunities for writing for purpose and audience and focuses on the whole writing process - planning, drafting, editing and publishing to develop proficiency in writing and pupils who regard themselves as authors. 

Reading

Our vision at Yattendon is to equip our pupils with the essential life skill of reading, to know that we read for meaning, that it has a purpose, and to promote a love of books.

Reading lessons are centred around a carefully selected text which aims to challenge all pupils. Within the reading lessons the pupils are taught to retrieve, infer, predict, sequence and analyse key vocabulary in the text. These skills equip the pupils with the comprehension skills they need to enjoy stories and become lifelong readers. 

Throughout the school, we ensure that all pupils are exposed to a wealth of high-quality literature. Every class has opportunities to visit our magnificent school library and we promote high quality texts from a range of different cultures using our Reading Ambassadors.

Phonics

At Yattendon we use the programme Read, Write Inc. Phonics.  Read Write Inc Phonics, is a highly successful literacy programme created by Ruth Miskin and published by Oxford University Press.

The Read Write Inc. programme is carefully matched to the national curriculum, giving our pupils an excellent start with their literacy skills. The programme supports all pupils to become fluent readers, confident speakers and willing writers.  It is also used to teach early reading and writing skills.  It integrates phonics with comprehension, writing, grammar, spelling and handwriting.  The programme ensure phonics teaching is effective and pupils meet high expectations.

Writing

We aim to give our writers regular opportunities for writing within every English unit:

Imitation

During the imitation stage, pupils get to know a text really well by orally learning it, exploring it through drama and then reading it to build a bank of vocabulary and useful writing tools to use in their own writing.

Skills Development

Within this section of our English units, we teach the skills which will allow our young writers to flourish.  Children are taught explicit grammar, punctuation and spellings which are embedded into planning. Children understand grammatical terms, can use a variety of grammatical techniques in their own writing and discuss the impact of their choices. Our vision is for all our pupils to be confident writers across the curriculum.

Innovation

The Innovation stage is grounded in the processes of shared writing, with a strong and systematic focus on securing the basics of handwriting, phonics/spelling. The pupils are given the opportunity to be creative and apply their own ideas to the text type that is being taught. Children produce their best piece of writing during this stage and we proudly celebrate our pupils’ achievements.