English at Blueberry Park | Blueberry Park Primary School

English

What makes a good English student at Blueberry Park?

A love of reading and writing, an ability to think and work independently, an ability to persevere, an enquiring mind, a good knowledge of grammar, an ability to share ideas, is able to attempt new things and explore creativity. The children will demonstrate being inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, open-minded, risk takers, caring, balanced, reflective and resilient.

About English

English has a pre-eminent place in education and in society. A high-quality education in English will teach pupils to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them. Through reading in particular, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually.

SMSC in English

Writing

At Blueberry Park we follow a Mastery approach to English through the programme ‘Pathways to Write.’ Units of work are delivered using high quality texts and children in all year groups are given varied opportunities for writing. Skills are built up through repetition within the units, and children apply these skills in the writing activities provided. Many opportunities for widening children’s vocabulary are given through the Pathways to Write approach and this builds on the extensive work we do in school to provide our children with a rich and varied vocabulary. You will find the end of year expectations for writing, reading and spoken language for each of our year groups in the attached documents. For further detail on the skills that your children are learning on a termly basis, please contact your class teacher.

Spelling

Our school follows the Spelling Shed scheme of work which supports teachers in ensuring coverage and organised progression of the statutory requirements for the National Curriculum. There is a suggested teaching sequence for each spelling convention with supporting children's resources including orthography, morphology and etymology. We follow the 'Review, Teach, Practice, Apply' Spelling cycle and use ongoing assessment opportunities. Online games can be accessed on most devices at home or in school.

Handwriting

Children are taught handwriting following the Read, Write Inc. letter formation, before moving on to the Collins Primary Focus: Handwriting. This is a comprehensive whole-school programme designed to support teachers and children through the stages of learning a clear, fluent, legible and fast style of joined writing from the early stages to the top of the Primary phase. All our adults model their handwriting according to school policy, ensuring our children learn by copying joins correctly in taught sessions and through further independent practice.

Reading

We are very well-resourced at Blueberry Park, benefiting from two libraries, which contain a range of reading books, non-fiction texts, class reader sets and quality chapter books that ensure reading for pleasure and enjoyment. We also subscribe to First News children's newspapers, Storytime, National Geographic for Kids and Whizz, Pop, Bang magazines, while every class has developed their own designated Reading Area.

Reading Books

Our main schemes are Read, Write, Inc. and Oxford Reading Tree, which includes: Alien Adventures, Hero Academy, Floppy's Phonics, Biff, Chip and Kipper, Traditional Tales, Songbird Phonics, inFact and Story Sparks. Children follow the Read, Write, Inc. scheme until they have completed it before moving on to the Oxford Reading Tree scheme, progressing to Stage 11 - Lime. Once our more able Year 2 children are ready to move on from Lime books, they are introduced to Challenge Books, which are short, chapter books by famous authors such as: Roald Dahl, Jeremy Strong and D. King-Smith, in preparation for Reading in Key Stage 2. From Year 3, according to their Reading Age, the children are encouraged to read Stages 12-20, which include: Classic Texts, Graphic Novels, technical and wider vocabulary and so are much more challenging. Every child is heard to read by an adult in school at least once per week and are encouraged to read to an adult at home every night.

In addition, our children are also encouraged to choose a book from the library to share with an adult at home and further develop their Reading for Pleasure and enjoyment.

Storytime

Children listening to the teacher reading aloud is extremely important in our school: we encourage this every day. It is their chance to listen to good modelling of the various reading strategies such as: fluency and pace, character expression, reading to the punctuation, tackling difficult vocabulary and pausing for dramatic effect. At Blueberry Park, we start every morning with a whole school Storytime session where a member of SLT or a guest reads a short story. The children are actively encouraged to discuss the story and borrow the book to read again.

Whole Class Reading

At Blueberry Park, we have invested in class sets of key driver texts to support our new curriculum, in addition to the extensive range of single copies found in our libraries and reading areas. We encourage pupils to participate with whole class reading in a variety of ways, such as modelled, choral and performance reading. This is followed by a short incidental writing opportunity, following the VIPERS ideology which covers the National Curriculum content domains.

Blueberry Park is a Reading School.