Subject Leader – Miss K Dunn
Our pupils’ backgrounds, our culture and our climate for learning provide the following drivers that underpin our curriculum and our vision and weave through all that we do.
- Catholic values – which helps pupils grow spiritually and give them values for life outside of school
- Historic Environment – which helps pupils to understand and appreciate their locality which facilitates their relationship to the wider world
- Resilience – which helps pupils grow as learners
- Independence – which helps pupils to grow as independent learners, not dependent on adults to learn
- Subject knowledge and skills – which help pupils develop their knowledge and skills and give them knowledge for life
- Tolerance – respecting and valuing the beliefs, values, choices and opinions of others
Reading
Intent
The intent of our reading curriculum is to develop children’s reading and understanding so that they become fluent, confident readers who can apply their knowledge and reading skills across different subject areas and for different purposes.
As a result, our children will be able to:
- Read confidently and fluently.
- Apply phonetical knowledge and other taught strategies to read unfamiliar words.
- Use taught strategies to find the meanings of new words in a given context.
- Develop a broad and ambitious vocabulary through reading.
- Develop comprehension skills to understand and interrogate a text.
- Ask questions to further their understanding.
- Embrace a love of reading.
- Use their reading skills in all areas of the curriculum.
Implementation
In EYFS and in Key Stage One, reading is taught through a synthetic phonics programme called Read Write Inc (RWI). Please refer to our Phonics Statement of Intent for further information.
In Key Stage Two, reading is taught through whole class guided reading and comprehension lessons using Steps to Read. We read a variety of fiction and non-fiction texts with the children during these sessions and engage in tasks where the children develop their word reading, knowledge of vocabulary and language features, as well as developing their comprehension skills.
Through carefully crafted units of work we also provide curriculum knowledge for foundations subjects. Children are taught all aspects of word reading and comprehension through high-quality fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts. The primary aim of Steps to Read is to teach reading comprehensions skills and strategies explicitly.
Steps to Read:
- Is sequenced, coherent and progressive
- Uses language-rich texts for vocabulary teaching
- Includes all elements of comprehension, taught sequentially across an academic year
- Has a clear focus on the skills and strategies needed to be a proficient and confident reader
- Uses engaging texts to promote a life-long love of reading
- Includes poetry, non-fiction and fiction that enhances knowledge learning across the curriculum
Across the reading curriculum, those children who require further support with their phonics knowledge and word reading have access to phonics and reading interventions, as well as ‘booster reading’. Teachers ensure that children requiring additional support are identified early and provisions are made as appropriate.
Children’s reading books are matched to their reading ability and are changed weekly with children being given enough books for the week.
Reading takes place across the curriculum, so the children are exposed to a wide range of texts, which they read and use for different purposes. Teachers also find opportunities throughout the week to read to children and develop their love of reading.
Impact
The impact of our reading curriculum will be apparent in the children’s engagement, enjoyment and enthusiasm towards reading, as well as the progress evidenced in their books and through their discussions. The impact of the reading curriculum will be evident in their ability to read confidently and fluently, apply taught strategies and demonstrate a secure understanding of what they have read.
Teachers give feedback to children to further their understanding and provide challenge, and children act upon this feedback. Teachers continually assess children’s reading throughout every lesson and adapt teaching and learning to meet their children’s needs. Termly reading assessments also take place in each class and data is used to inform future teaching. The impact of our reading curriculum is also shown through the results of the end of key stage tests in year 2 and year 6.
If you would like to learn more about how we teach reading at St Michael’s please refer to Reading whole school progression document
Steps to read progression of skills for Year 6 Reading, Year 5 Reading, Year 4 Reading, Year 3 Reading.
The Steps to Read approach was adopted by our school part-way through this 2021-2022 academic year, therefore classes are working through units at a slightly different timescale to those detailed in the progression of skills. From the academic year 2022-2023, the units covered will align with the above progression of skills documents.
Writing
Intent
The intent of our writing curriculum is to develop children’s ability to write a range of purposeful, well-structured, detailed fiction and non-fiction texts which engage the interest of the reader.
We aim for our children to be able to:
- Record their own ideas, thoughts and opinions.
- Write sentences with grammatical accuracy.
- Apply taught strategies to aid spelling.
- Understand and use ambitious vocabulary.
- Use a range of punctuation correctly and for effect.
- Increase their understanding of language structures and techniques.
- Write a range of text types, for different purposes and in different styles.
- Use their writing skills in all areas of the curriculum.
- Evaluate, edit and improve their own writing.
Implementation
Early writing is developed through play and real life writing opportunities, both inside and outside the classroom environment. Children also develop their writing in their phonics learning and through directed writing tasks. A broad range of activities are used to develop children’s gross and fine motor skills, in order to aid handwriting development.
We have recently adopted Jane Considine’s ‘The Write Stuff’ scheme of work, in order to improve attainment, engagement and confidence in writing for all of our children and to enable them to become more resilient, independent writers. The scheme is used in every class in our school, starting in the summer term of EYFS. Through this scheme and the additional opportunities we create for the children, they develop skills which allow them to explore and write a range of fiction and non-fiction texts, whilst also learning to evaluate and improve their own writing. Teachers ensure that writing is exciting, engaging and purposeful and ensure that children’s writing is celebrated.
Impact
The impact of our writing curriculum is evident in the children’s written work. Teachers continually give feedback to children to further their understanding and provide challenge, and children act upon this feedback. Children’s independence and confidence in applying skills taught and developed in writing lessons will be seen across the breadth of the curriculum and will be evidenced in their written work in all subjects. Teachers complete termly assessments in writing and this data is then analysed and used to inform future teaching.
To find out more about the topics and text types we cover in our writing lessons, please view our Writing Long Term Overview 2021-2022
Writing whole school progression document and SPaG Whole school progression document.
If you would like to learn more about our reading and writing in St Michael’s School please read our Reading Policy and our Writing Policy.
