English

WELCOME TO THE ENGLISH PAGE

As part of our role we run weekly reading clubs,  and promote regular book recommendations and reviews. Competitions are also held to promote a love of English and reading throughout the school. Recently, we have set up a book swap for parents/carers too!

If you have any questions about English at St. Bede's Catholic Junior School, please click HERE.

Please click on the links below for exciting English activities.

  Doodle English              Book Trust                     Love Reading Site            Topmarks English Games       

Intent Statement

At St Bede’s Catholic Junior School, all staff take pride and ownership in the English curriculum which has been uniquely designed to challenge through the careful choice of high-quality, substantive texts that ensure a range, depth and breadth with consideration for our values as a Catholic school. In following the National Curriculum, we regularly assess and design our curriculum to provide for the needs of all children.

Ours is a dynamic, receptive, ever evolving curriculum, receptive to the children and their particular needs; to changes in research and to the publication of challenging texts. Our curriculum is planned to provide opportunities for mastery in all areas as well as introduction to new knowledge.

In English, we recognise that it is not taught in just one lesson a day, but that our entire curriculum, daily interactions with children and our school environment are part of the ethos of English in our school. We take pleasure in reading and ‘teach’ this to the children through a range of strategies which prioritises reading for pleasure. We provide the highest quality English education through excellent pedagogical practice, a constant awareness of research in education and our children’s needs with Christ at the centre and children at its heart.

Ours is not a static curriculum, but an ever-changing, challenging journey that recognises the critical importance of English in the wider world ensuring that once children leave St Bede’s they are able to live their lives with a deep understanding of spiritual, moral, social and cultural issues.

Our English curriculum.

• Creates masters of English;
• Is focused on challenge and that we have high expectations for all especially in regards to vocabulary
• Is reading rich so that ALL children read to at least an age appropriate level
• Ensures that our children acquire the skills, knowledge and concepts that will enable them to engage in society;
• Enables children to express themselves in a range of different situations and contexts;
• Celebrates children for their success and progress;
• Creates critical and reflective thinkers;
• Ensures that children can read and read widely, understand what they’ve read and are able to respond to a range of literature for enjoyment and information

Teaching and Learning Intentions:

At St Bede’s, our children read, understand and respond to a range of literature for enjoyment and information

• Read to an age appropriate level
• Take advantage of opportunities for reading;
• Read with confidence and fluency
• Love reading and reads a wide range of texts;
• Have the ability to understand texts using inference, deduction and prediction’
• Have an excellent understanding of vocabulary and a range of strategies to deduce the pronunciation and meaning of difficult words;
• Have the ability to summarise and explain’
• Read often and regularly at home and/or in school
• Are rewarded for progression

At St Bede’s, our children write in many different contexts and with a range of purposes, both for enjoyment and to provide information

• Write with confidence and speed
• Write for a range of purposes and audiences
• Use a range of vocabulary and literary devices
• Use standard English confidently
• Write legibly
• Spell confidently and can locate resources to support them when necessary
• Have their work celebrated and published
• Have the ability to edit and redraft

Organisation of Teaching and Learning:

English is taught daily;

Feedback is provided verbally and in writing within their books;

A spelling lesson occurs once a week following the Rising Stars schemes of work;

Staff devise units of work around specific texts and incorporate set objectives for the term which build on mastery of previously acquired skills;

Opportunities for work to be published are given regularly specifically using the Pobble website and also within school;

Texts used for English schemes of work are monitored in order to ensure a range of texts studied;

The teaching of reading skills is also discretely throughout the week following a reading progression plan and using a reading spine;

We are models of reading and writing. Teaching encourages modelling in these areas, so that children can have high-quality writing modelled to them and also listen to expert reading modelled as well;

The teaching of reading may occur in one lesson or across the week, but features the specific teaching of vocabulary, reading and rereading in order to establish fluency followed by questioning either written or verbally;

Texts used in the reading spine are monitored and devised using Doug Lemov’s 5 plagues of reading and are monitored to ensure a range of texts taught;

VIPERS is used to teach reading comprehension, but also use a range of strategies available to us in order to continuously formatively assess understanding;

In handwriting, we follow the letterjoins cursive style and teach skills based on the groups that are taught;

In order to ensure mastery, children may be taught objectives from previous year groups where it has not been mastered;

Vocabulary and the focus and development of vocabulary is explicitly taught within reading lessons and is a key part of all areas of the curriculum;

Phonics is taught, where necessary, based on assessment and other intervention programmes are utilised based on the individual needs on the children;

We do not operate a one-size fits all approach, but for those pupils who are not meeting age-related expectations we target specific and identifiable areas of need; however, we also recognise smaller steps of progress.

Impact 

Our English curriculum has an ambition for high achievement amongst all pupils. Children should make progress and attain in line with or better than national expectations for the subject and attainment in other foundation subjects within the school.

At St Bede’s, achievement in English is categorised and measured as follows:

Skills

Children will be able to read at an age appropriate level; they will read with fluency and speed demonstrating the ability to understand what they have read through the use of comprehension skills. Children will engage with reading and love it; having read a wide range of genres and texts and having read a range of different authors. They will be able to write for a range of different purposes; apply their understanding of etymology and morphology to spell words, but also be able to use resources to support their spelling. They will be able to use feedback to edit and redraft sections or whole elements of their writing focusing on a range of skills such as enjoyment of reading as well as grammar, punctuation and spelling.

Knowledge and Understanding

Children will have knowledge and understanding of all of the elements of the National Curriculum. They will be able to understand and apply grammar, spelling and punctuation rules. They will have knowledge of a range of authors and be able to use texts in order to gain further understanding. Children at St Bede’s will be able to gain a better understanding of the 21^st Century world through our teaching of English. 

Management and Evaluation of Impact:

• English books are regularly monitored to ensure that the planned curriculum is being taught

• Unit plans are updated and monitored in order to ensure that the curriculum is being covered

• Assessment of reading ages will be monitored in order to measure progress and also to identify children who may be falling behind

• NFER tests will be undertaken each year in order to measure progress

• Reading questionnaires are undertaken with staff, pupils and parents

• Baseline assessments in reading, writing and phonics are undertaken in Year 3 in order to identify specific areas of weakness which may impact upon the curriculum. 

• Assessment information is reviewed by the SLT

PHONICS in a Junior School

Being able to read is the most-important skill a child will learn; the ability to read has significant impact on both confidence and well-being throughout children’s lives and into adulthood. As such, here at St. Bede’s Catholic Junior School, we are dedicated to the delivery of excellence in the teaching of Phonics through a high-quality scheme that befits our junior school context.

We work continually to develop each and every child so that they are able to decode letters and sounds with accuracy; are able to read known and unknown words both fluently and confidently and we do this whilst cultivating a deep, life-long love of reading within our learners.

Through the use of our discrete ‘Sounds Write’ phonics instruction programme, which is taught by specially-certified staff, we are able to ensure both fidelity to the requirements of phonics programme itself and that our children make the necessary progress towards becoming competent decoders, fluent readers and are able to communicate clear and insightful comprehension of the words and books they read (be it as part of their curriculum content or those they choose to read for pleasure).

‘Sounds Write’ is a multi-sensory programme offering our children clear and exact progress in phonics. In addition to this, ‘Sounds Write’ serves to develop mastery in the teaching and understanding of phonics instruction too; this programme centres on well-established theories of teaching and learning, thus empowering our educators with the necessary knowledge and confidence required to support our children with the foundation to reading fluency.

In practice, the Sounds Write programme exposes children to the 175 most common spellings of the 44 sounds in English (accent depending), through carefully crafted session that go from simple to more complex. The ‘Sounds Write’ linguistic phonics programme ensures that:

1. A) Children develop key concepts about the way English is written;
2. B) Children practise the skills essential for reading and spelling accurately;
3. C) Children learn the sounds and the spellings of English.

Through the ‘Sounds Write’ synthetic phonics programme, children will understand the following four key concepts:

1. Letters represent sounds (they do not make sounds),
2. A sound can be spelt with 1, 2, 3 or 4 letters,
3. In English the same sound is often written with different spellings (same sound, different spellings),
4. In English, the same spelling can spell different sounds (for example, spells the sound /o/ in dog, /oe/ in go and /oo/ in do).

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