our vision
Literacy plays a significant role in both education and in society as a whole. People with advanced reading and writing skills have more opportunities within school and also professionally. At Nelson we believe that understanding language helps all pupils to access the whole curriculum. Through being taught to write and speak fluently, pupils learn to communicate their ideas and emotions to others; through their reading and listening, others can respond and communicate back. Reading allows pupils the chance to develop culturally, emotionally, spiritually and socially. Through reading a wide variety of texts pupils acquire new knowledge and build on what they already know. In order to participate fully as a member of society, all the skills of language are essential. We use Jane Conserdine's The Write Stuff programme across all year groups.
We believe every child should leave a reader, loving reading, choosing their own books and sharing with family and friends. We aim for all children to develop a deep understanding and knowledge of how to read, understand, speak and write. That an enjoyment and love of reading is embedded and that children are happy, confident and independent learners. Our vision is that every child, no matter the barriers, reads to learn as well as learns to read. We want to produce creative and technically skilled writers who can write for a range of purposes who understand the toolkit needed for all writing genres.
We want all teaching at Nelson to be engaging and motivating as well as challenging and supportive. We aim to develop confident, independent writers and readers through effective teaching of reading and writing. The use of prior learning and high-quality assessment for all alongside learning opportunities will help us achieve our vision.
Reading
At Nelson, we are passsionate about every child learning to read. Once our children become confident readers they can use their skills to enjoy books, become life long readers and read to learn. We use the Read Write Inc phonics programme at Nelson to learn to read. VIPERS is the programme we use to teach whole class reading and comprehension. VIPERS is an engaging programme that gives teachers the autonomy to select from our range of high quality texts which link with their current Mantle project. We teach VIPERS within whole class teaching sessions to encourage peer to peer support and develop a love for reading alongside developing highly tuned inference and deduction skills. Follow the link to our Reading at Nelson brochure to find out more /norfolk/primary/nelson/arenas/websitecontent/web/readingatnelson_20220930131545697.pdf
intent
The National Curriculum underpins our English teaching. We also use other programmes of learning to help build on prior knowledge and deepen children’s understanding and independence in a consistent and sequenced way. At Nelson, we use the Read Write Inc: Phonics scheme as well as Read Write Inc: Literacy and Language for those more advanced readers and writers. Children are grouped according to stage of learning to ensure every child moves fluidly between groups to complete the programmes as quickly as they can. We aim for the majority of our pupils to complete our phonics programme by the end of the Autumn Term of Year 2 but of course many much sooner. We understand the important of the explicit teaching of writing so we use The Write Stuff – a programme that teaches specific skills for writing and then challenges children to use these skills independently at the end of each unit. Reading is at the heart of our curriculum and our aim is to encourage a love of reading right from the start. We aim is to expose children to a range of books that not only develop a love of reading, but have been chosen specifically to develop their oracy, vocabulary and comprehension. These books will be embedded in our provision through activities, story sessions and on display for children to access independently. Through this, children begin to internalise new vocabulary, language patterns and begin to retell stories. We begin phonics lessons on entry to Reception, which support the mechanics of reading and writing.
EYFS
We study English explicitly through the EYFS framework areas of Literacy and Communication and Language but
Reading is at the heart of our curriculum and our aim is to encourage a love of reading right from the start. We aim is to expose children to a range of books that not only develop a love of reading, but have been chosen specifically to develop their oracy, vocabulary and comprehension. These books will be embedded in our provision through activities, story sessions and on display for children to access independently. Through this, children begin to internalise new vocabulary, language patterns and begin to retell stories. We begin phonics lessons on entry to Reception, which support the mechanics of reading and writing.
Our intent is that children will become independent and confident writers with clear, consistent handwriting. Children will use ambitious vocabulary that is relevant and express a passion for reading and writing. All our curriculum subject areas give pupils the opportunity to write for a purpose.
implementation
Our reading curriculum builds knowledge incrementally using Read Write Inc phonics. Lessons are sequenced and use previous skills to build up knowledge as the children progress. When they have completed the programme they move onto the Language and Literacy module which inspires children to explore, question and challenge using a range of texts.
The teaching of English at Nelson is split into 2 key learning areas: Reading and Writing. We build up skills through the carefully sequenced teaching of handwriting, spelling, creative writing, reading comprehension and decoding. Children will have opportunities to develop fluency through regular practice in daily reading sessions during phonics, as small groups/1-1 weekly in class, whole class reading and group reading. This range of activities ensures exposure to a wide range of text genres and contexts for reading. Wherever we can, we build in writing opportunities – we have found that this increases engagement and motivation.
Our writing curriculum builds upon children’s use of phonic knowledge with an attitude of ‘Keep up not catch up’. We provide daily opportunities for writing whether it is sounds, words, sentences or longer pieces of extended writing.
In Year 2 we also follow the Read Write Inc spelling programme, allowing us to develop children spelling knowledge and skills as well as consolidating common exception words.
We teach and model handwriting daily so that children have a clear understanding of how their formation should look and where letters sit on the line. This enables us to support children with their presentation.
We use The Write Stuff which links to the National curriculum and supports us with our coverage. This teaching is based on the idea of modelling and teaching in ‘bitesize’ chunks allowing the teaching of grammar and other writing techniques to be taught regularly and through experience days and sentence stacking days.
We use Read Write Inc assessments to measure progress in phonics ½ termly. In Year 2 we also measure progress using the Teacher Assessment Framework (TAF) objectives in reading. In writing we use the Performance of Writing Framework set out by Jane Considine’s The Write Stuff.
impact
Children will retain more information and build upon their knowledge over their time spent at Nelson.
They will learn to:
- Use a wide range of vocabulary and know the meaning behind it.
- Become confident, fluent, expressive readers.
- Talk about, discuss and link books when reading.
- Seek out books to read for pleasure and share these as recommendations.
- Become confident, independent writers who can write for a range of genres.
- Gain understanding of ‘the whole piece’ when writing.
- Strengthen their ideas and cohesion when writing.
- Use ambitious vocabulary in their work.
Assessment
- Read Write Inc phonics assessments
- Book looks
- Drop ins
- Pupil voice
- Teacher Assessment Framework (TAFS)
Key Websites to support planning and assessment: