English

Intention

At Shephalbury Park, we intend for our learners to acquire, through high-quality teaching of English, the fundamental skills essential to access knowledge and understanding across the curriculum. We intend for children to confidently communicate their knowledge and ideas effectively using a wide vocabulary. Through immersion in high-quality texts, we hope to instil a love of reading and develop creativity within our learners.

Phonics 

At Shephalbury Park, we follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised phonics programme, with children in EYFS and KS1 participating in a daily phonics session. Children in Nursery develop the foundation skills for phonics, with teaching based on Phase 1 of Letters and Sounds.

Children in Reception and KS1 are taught in small groups, accurately matched to their starting points through our half-termly assessments. Children requiring further support participate in additional Little Wandle Keep Up or Catch Up sessions to ensure they make progress. Our staff have received training to teach the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised phonics programme.

Reading

Children across the school take part in a daily adult-led guided reading session. In Nursery, children participate in a whole class session, developing their love of reading and understanding of books. As they move into Reception and Year 1, children’s guided reading takes place in small groups, using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised reading books. In Year 2 and into Year 3, children are taught to develop their reading and comprehension skills through the Little Wandle Fluency Scheme. In year 2 and across KS2, guided reading is predominantly taught as a whole class with smaller groups receiving additional support where this is required.  

Our early home reading books are all phonetically decodable and matched to the phase of phonics children are currently working at. These are all aligned to the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression. As children develop as readers, they move to reading books from the PM scheme which supports them to develop their fluency and prosody alongside their comprehension skills. Children in KS2 learn to retrieve and infer key information, predict and summarise, compare and analyse texts. 

Writing

Our English lessons are taught using the Herts for Learning ESSENTIALWRITING scheme. ESSENTIALWRITING is a progressively sequenced writing curriculum for Reception to Year 6, that is built upon the principles of writing for authentic purpose and audience. The curriculum is designed to teach and review children’s understanding of language choices, according to their writing purpose, across the year and in subsequent years.

Further, detailed information about the ESSENTIALWRITING scheme can be found in the document below. 

Spellings 

In Reception and Year 1, children are taught spellings as part of their phonics sessions. In Years 2 to 6, children we teach children the conventions of spelling through the ESSENTIALSPELLING scheme. The ESSENTIALSPELLING scheme weaves together the strands of Phonology (the sounds letters make), morphology (the structure of words, e.g. prefixes and suffixes) and etymology (the origin and evolution of words) into a progression of lessons. This progression systematically builds upon prior learning, supports learners to make connections with existing knowledge and helps learners to grow their spelling confidence. 

Every half-term, children will bring home a grid which explains the spelling patterns or rules they will be learning during the half-term. This grid will also contain ideas to help parents and carers to support children's learning at home as well as lists of words which illustrate the pattern or rule. Teachers assess children's spelling through their application of the patterns and rules taught in their independent writing. 

Handwriting

We use Letterjoin to teach handwriting. Letterjoin is a whole school teaching scheme which combines interactive whiteboard features such as animations and games alongside worksheets. The systematic lesson plans take learners from developing their fine motor skills in the Early Years to writing in fluent, joined handwriting in Key Stage 2. 

Learners have access to the Letterjoin website at home to enable them to practise what they have learnt in class. Learners will receive a copy of their log in details. If you require another copy, please speak to your child's class teacher or Mrs Cargill.