English

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot." ~ Stephen King

Reading

At Radstock, we read and discuss high quality texts by a range of diverse and inspirational authors. Picture books and novels are read in full, so that the classes can fully immerse themselves in every story. In the upper school, these books will be read across a half-term.

Children in EYFS and Key Stage 1 are taught reading skills through the highly structured and effective phonics programme, Read, Write Inc. Year 2 spend 40 minutes each day on the comprehension element of the programme.

In Year 2, children also practise Echo Reading/My Turn Your Turn whereby they listen to the teacher reading a text, a sentence at time, before repeating it exactly as the teacher did, with intonation. We have found that this helps the children to have a better understanding of what they read.

Children in Key Stage 2 have daily lessons which focus on reading skills. These involve discussing and researching the meanings of key words in texts, both to extend the children’s vocabulary and aid understanding of what they are reading; analysing texts; identifying features of genres and discussing the author’s word choices and the effect they create. In addition to this, teachers model identifying the key words in questions and guide the children in answering those requiring retrieval, inference and author choice.

Children are expected to read every day from FS2 onwards. The accelerated reader program is used to monitor independent reading and reward those who have reached particular thresholds (1,000,000 words per year in the upper school). Parents and volunteers are invited into school on a weekly basis to read with the children.

Handwriting

A continuous cursive style is used at Radstock. Children in EYFS learn how to form individual letters. From Year 1, the expectation is that the children will begin to join letters together. As they do so, their writing becomes more fluent and supports them when writing at greater length as they move through the school.

Spelling

Once children complete the Read, Write Inc programme, they follow the National Curriculum spelling programme which follows a clear progression. This includes Common Exception Words for Year 1, Year 2, Years 3-4 and Years 5-6 and spelling rules. Children receive spelling homework from the end of Year 1. In Years 3-6, an online program is used for this.

Writing

At Radstock, we follow the Writing for Pleasure approach. Children are encouraged to use the skills they are taught to write pieces of work where they have greater levels of choice over the subject matter. In each writing project, we discuss what we are going to write, the purpose of the writing and its intended audience. Examples are shared and key features that will achieve the specific writing goals are discussed. Shared writing takes place in the early stages – often linked to the class novel, shared experiences or other curriculum learning. Throughout a writing project, children are encouraged to follow the stages of writing: generating ideas, planning, drafting, revising, editing and publishing. They understand that this is how writers work in the real world. In addition, children use their personal writing books to select their own writing projects alongside those that the whole class are working on. Grammar is taught through daily, short ‘super sentence’ activities as well as in longer sessions. The majority of this is ‘functional grammar’: something which will be useful to that day’s writing activity.

Curriculum Leaders: Mrs Lee, Mrs Edwards and Miss Thompson