WRITING

At HFS, we follow The Essential Writing Curriculum. An innovative primary writing curriculum built to develop skilled and successful writers. The curriculum is an ambitious and progressive writing scheme, hooked in with high-quality literature. It is fully aligned with the key messages in the writing framework and designed to give teachers subject knowledge, pedagogical tools and strategies to teach children how to write for specific purposes and authentic audiences. As a result, children feel inspired and ready to write high-quality outcomes.

 

READING

 

EARLY READING

Reading is fundamental to education. Proficiency in reading, writing and spoken language is vital for pupils' success. Through these, they develop communication skills for education and for working with others, especially in schools. Pupils who find it difficult to learn to read are likely to struggle across the curriculum. This is why we are committed to supporting pupils to learn to read from their earliest years. 

In order to read, pupils need to have a good knowledge of phonics and be able to decode words orally. We have chosen the Essential Letters and Sounds phonics scheme to support Early Reading development.

WHAT IS ESSENTIAL LETTERS AND SOUNDS(ELS)

ELS teaches children to read using a systematic synthetic phonics approach. It is designed to be used as part of an early learning environment that is rich in talk and story, where children experience the joy of books and language whilst rapidly acquiring the skills to become fluent independent readers and writers.

ELS teaches children to:

• decode by identifying each sound within a word and blending them together to read fluently
• encode by segmenting each sound to write words accurately.

We know that for children at the end of Key Stage 1 to achieve the age-related expectations, they need to read fluently at 90 words per minute. As children move into Key Stage 2, it is vitally important that even those who have made the slowest progress are able to read age-appropriate texts independently and with fluency.

For children to engage with the wider curriculum, they need to be able to read well, make inferences and draw on background knowledge to support their developing understanding of a text when they read.

To do this, they need to be able to draw not only on their phonic knowledge but also on their wider reading and comprehension skills, each of which must be taught.

The first step in this complex process is the link between spoken and written sounds. ELS whole-class, daily phonics teaching must begin from the first days of foundation. Through the rigorous ELS teaching programme, children will build an immediate understanding of the relationship between the sounds they can hear and say (phonemes) and the written sounds (graphemes).

USEFUL TERMINOLOGY WHEN WE TEACH PHONICS

• phoneme- the smallest unit of sound in a word.
• grapheme – letter or a group of letters representing one sound, e.g. s, sh, ch, igh.
• digraph – two letters making one sound, e.g. sh, th, ph.
• vowel digraphs – two vowels which, together, make one sound, e.g. ai, oo, ow.
• split digraph – two letters, split, making one sound, e.g. a-eas in make or i-e in kite
• VC word: vowel consonant e.g.  up
• CVC: consonant vowel consonant e.g. cap.
• CCVC: consonant consonant vowel consonant e.g.  clap.
• vowels – the open sounds / letters of the alphabet: a, e, i, o and u
• consonants – sounds/ letters of the alphabet that are not vowels.
• blend – to merge individual sounds together to pronounce a word, e.g. s-n-a-p, blended together, reads snap.
• segment- to split up a word into its individual phonemes in order to spell it, e.g. the word 'cat' has three phonemes: /c/, /a/, /t/.
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KS1 READING

In KS1, to support early reading development, each child is allocated reading books that directly align with their current phonic ability, utilising the Essential Letters and Sounds programme. All children take part in regular guided reading lessons that focus on promoting pupils' phonics knowledge and decoding at word level, reading for enjoyment, developing reading stamina, and exploring texts to improve comprehension skills. Children are also engaged in reading a variety of carefully selected books within a group setting or a whole class setting. Each group is assigned a particular book, matched to their reading ability. Once children are confident and fluent in their phonics, they will be allocated colour-banded books at their level. From Summer term, Year 2 will move to whole class reading in preparation for KS2.

KS2 READING 

At HFS, we follow a whole class reading curriculum designed by Ashley Booth. More information can be found here: https://mrboothy6.wordpress.com/2023/07/24/meaningful-non-fiction-reading-sessions/ and here: A KS2 Reading Curriculum – The Teaching Booth (wordpress.com). 

We also implement reading fluency lessons twice weekly.

On Mondays and Fridays, we read our class novel and the children engage in ‘book talk’. This gives children chance to experience high-quality discussion with their teacher, which includes exploring retrieval based questions.

Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are more focused sessions, where the children are immersed in a variety of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. They explore ‘linked texts’ which are three texts that sit well together. The three days can be linked through subject, author or text type such as, The Vikings, Michael Morpurgo or Poetry. We use this approach to ensure that the children are exposed to a variety of texts and don’t miss out on the best of the best.

One of the first activities we begin with in every session is exploring vocabulary. The children explore rich vocabulary that they may never normally come across. We have found this to be extremely beneficial for our children, particularly leading up to year 6 SATs. The rest of the lesson is then divided up between Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval and Summarising questions.

We also make it our priority to read our class novel for fifteen minutes per day. This is completely separate to our guided reading lessons so that the children are exposed to higher level texts, hear them read allowed by their class teacher on a daily basis and develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information.

See below for the themes and content each year group will cover.

YEAR 3 SCHEME OF WORK

 

YEAR 4 SCEME OF WORK

 

YEAR 5 SCEME OF WORK

 

YEAR 6 SCEME OF WORK