English

The teaching of phonic skills is embedded within English teaching through daily sessions in Reception and KS1. These are for 20 minutes and we follow the Essential Letters and Sounds validated SSP phonics programme.

These sessions teach children the link between the sounds of our language (phonemes) and the written representation of these sounds (graphemes), or the spellings of the sounds contained within the English language. There are opportunities for the children to apply their learning in each session and targeted interventions to enable all children to follow the programme. Alongside their daily phonics session, the Oxford University Press fully decodable reading scheme provides Reception and KS1 children with the opportunity to apply their reading skills.

Any children in year groups further up the school who have been assessed as working below national expectations in phonics will receive further phonics intervention to support their development in reading and writing.

At Our Lady of Mount Carmel we strive to foster a love of reading. Classrooms reflect the importance of reading for pleasure by providing the children with an attractive reading area and a range of fiction and cross- curricular topic books. All children are given the opportunity to read to an adult in school regularly and hear a class book or picture book read to them daily (if possible) by the class teacher.

Reading books are number banded according to difficulty so that children who are familiar with the level at which they are working, can independently choose an appropriate book. The children’s book band reading levels are carefully monitored by the class teacher through 1:1 reading and the children move up a number band as their reading and comprehension improves. When they become fluent readers (usually in Year 4) children can choose books themselves by browsing independently.

Children are also encouraged to share books as well as to read quietly by themselves. All children have reading diaries which parents are encouraged to use at home and sign when their child has read to them. Older pupils may record their own reading activities although it is expected that their parents still monitor home reading.

Reading and comprehension skills, in line with National Curriculum expectations, are taught explicitly within English lessons and also throughout the curriculum. Over the course of the year, group and whole class guided reading covers all the reading assessment statements so that children are prepared to answer a variety of question types and can retrieve as well and interpret information in the books they are reading. Parents are encouraged to support the development of reading comprehension by asking their children questions when reading at home to check their child’s understanding.

When children are struggling to progress, extra support is given to them through targeted reading interventions. Children may also receive additional support in the form of interventions recommended by the Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCO) as and when appropriate.

At the heart of our school is a bright, attractive library which is enjoyed by all of the children and houses our banded reading books and library books. We run many competitions in school to further develop a love of reading and a passion for literature, including our hugely successful ‘Book in a Box’ competition which has meant the school librarians in Year 4 are able to bring stories to life for the children during their lunchtime reading sessions. In Key Stage 2 children have enjoyed a ‘Book Borrowing Box’ and ‘Never Judge a Book by its Cover’ initiative.

Every year we celebrate World Book Day in March with the children being encouraged to dress up as their favourite character from a book and the staff choose a staff theme. In the past these have included ‘Where’s Wally?’ ‘Roald Dahl’ ‘Traditional Tales’ ‘Stories by author Lucy Rowland’ who was a visitor in school to open our library and carry out workshops on writing with each class.

At Our Lady of Mount Carmel, our contextualised approach to the teaching of writing encourages the children to develop a love of writing alongside the necessary skills that are needed to become a confident and independent writer. 

Writing is explicitly taught within a sequence of learning focusing on a high quality text and includes the following steps: learning about the text, practising writing and independent writing. Throughout our sequences of learning, the pupils will be exposed to a range of different writing opportunities, such as, writing: narratives, diary entries, autobiographies, non-chronological reports and poetry.

The teaching of spelling is an integral part of our English curriculum, enabling children to communicate their understanding across all aspects of their learning and ensuring that they develop into confident and effective writers. Through the development of a consistent approach to the teaching of spelling patterns, conventions and rules through the ‘No Nonsense’ spelling programme, we provide our children with a range of strategies to equip them with confidence and independence to tackle more
challenging and ambitious vocabulary, enabling them to develop a rich vocabulary and become effective communicators. We actively promote the learning of spellings in context, including statutory words, common exceptions and personal spellings.

As a school we recognise that handwriting is a crucial skill and children’s ability to write fluently for the rest of their lives depend on a good foundation of taught handwriting in the early years of their education.

We believe that handwriting is a developmental process with its own distinctive stages of progression from readiness for handwriting, through to letter joins, practising speed and fluency and higher presentation skills which is delivered across the school through our Letter-join Handwriting Scheme.