At Our Lady of Grace Junior School, we aim to help children become confident users of all aspects of the English language. Language and literature are at the heart of each individual’s humanity and we respect the many languages that our pupils bring to school.

We recognise that English is a core subject within the National Curriculum and a prerequisite for educational and social progress. Language empowers children to communicate creatively and imaginatively, as well as allows them to interact with the world at large. With success in English, all of our children can succeed in all areas of their learning. 

INTENT

At Our Lady of Grace Junior school we aim to inspire a love of English and as a staff and community we work closely together to provide curiosity and enthusiasm, building upon the skills from Year 3- Year 6 and beyond.

The 2014 National Curriculum for English aims to ensure that all children:

• Read easily, fluently and with good understanding.
• Develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information.
• Acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language.
• Appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage.
• Write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.
• Use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas.
• Are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate.

At Our Lady of Grace Junior School we combine these fundamental principles with a love of reading, and these are embedded in English lessons and in all areas of cross curricular learning. We aim to follow clear pathways of progression as each child advances through the primary curriculum.  We are committed to providing clear, rich and high-quality examples of English through both our teaching and the exposure of the children to high quality texts and the building of the children’s individual collection of the spine books that they study. We aim to ensure that each child recognises the significance of secure English skills for their future success.

At the heart of our school ethos is the idea that every child can achieve, and we believe that nurturing this growth mindset will equip the children with skills to embrace life opportunities.

IMPLEMENTATION

Our approach to reading, writing, speaking, listening and grammar skills at Our Lady of Grace gives all of our children the opportunity to succeed. We use whole-class teaching which encourages children to understand and master a concept before moving on to the next aspect of their learning. Our English lessons are designed to break down the National Curriculum into smaller and achievable steps of learning with the building of skills in each lesson and year group. This high-quality teaching is supported by our use of The Power of Reading Scheme, The Nelson spelling scheme, Oxford Reading Tree Scheme our cross-school Guided Reading Scheme, the high-quality texts, planning and teaching that we provide at Our Lady of Grace, and The Reading Eggs Scheme. The school ethos with our approach to reading and writing is also not limited to simply English lessons and instead a cross-curricular and teaching through books ideology has been implemented in the last academic year and is constantly evolving to include high-quality texts which compliments all aspects of the children’s learning.

We also aim to ensure that there is:

* ‘focused' learning of reading, writing, speaking and listening, in periods specifically allocated to this work.

*  learning, which goes on throughout the school day and throughout all curriculum areas.

* 'Excellence and Enjoyment,' as we seek to promote high-quality English skills across the whole curriculum.

Equal importance is given to each of these areas of learning.

IMPACT

Our school has a supportive ethos that looks to develop children’s collaborative and independent skills whilst recognising each child’s achievements and the achievements of others. Our growth mindset allows our children to understand that they can all achieve in English promoting both challenge and success in children’s reading and writing skills. Our regular and ongoing assessment in English alongside the intervention, support, and celebration of the children’s achievements through internal ‘Reading challenge’ which allow the children to celebrate their love of English whilst also developing their skills and understanding. The achievement of our ‘pen licenses’ also encourages the children to take pride in their work, increasing a focus on presentation and accuracy with spelling rules, grammatical rules which further enhance children’s understanding of what they are reading, and inspire high-quality writing achieved through modelling. These factors ensure that we maintain high standards in English and the achievement of our children at the end of KS2.

READING

At Our Lady of Grace we aim to promote a love of reading through our 'Reading First Approach,' this is used across the school and in partnership with home, it is to bring success to reading for all students. 

During many parent/teacher consultations we have been asked reading advice and we ask that you: 

- Read with your child for at least 15- 30 minutes every night, the more regularly you read the 
  quicker your child will make progress. 
- Listen to them read out loud so you can check for expression and fluency (i.e. not   
  monotone and robotic sounding). 
- Use the questions provided to help you to further develop your child’s understanding of 
  what they are reading.
- Encourage your child to read a range of text types: fiction, non-fiction and poetry.   
- Model reading. If they see you as a reader, your child will be more likely to become a 
  reader too. 

This will enrich your child's understanding and reading experiences. 

Reading Records 

Each child is expected to complete a reading record entry at least 5 or 6 times each week (depending on their year group- your child's teacher will have explained this expectation to them.) They should write a response to the 15- 30 minutes of reading they have completed that evening. Their entries should be varied and creative, children should pick from the Reading Activities Menu in the front of their reading record, these include tasks such as:

- Explain what has happened in the part I have read. 

- Create a character profile.

- Design a new front cover. 
- Write a character description using evidence from the book.
- Discuss what I think about a character’s actions using evidence from the book. 
- Predict what I think will happen next using evidence from the story.

READING CHALLENGE

Many students are actively completing the Reading Challenge!  

The Reading Challenge has been running in our school for the last two years.  Each child is asked to try and read twelve books from the Reading Challenge box in their class over the year. The reading of four books and completion of the appropriate challenge sheets ensures that the children are awarded the Bronze Reading Award, after eight books the children achieve the Silver Reading Award, after twelve books the children achieve the Gold Reading Award. They will be introduced to exciting authors, genres, scenarios and characters and the boxes are constantly being updated. Your child will be supported by their class teacher when picking their book however, if your child is finding reading the book independently a challenge, we ask you to share this book with them. Please support your child in completing their challenge. 

EXPECTATIONS FOR YEAR GROUPS

YEAR 3
 

• To be able to spell and read all high frequency words.
• To be able to use full stops and capital letters consistently and independently when writing.

YEAR 4
 

• To form all letters correctly and of uniform size to enable joined writing.
• To use a range of connectives and punctuation independently in all pieces of writing.
  (and  so  but   because    meanwhile   despite    first   after  etc.)
  (,   ?   !   " " ...) 
• To use a range of openers in sentences.

Year 5

• To recognise, annotate and write a variety of text types
• To develop a range of formal vocabulary
• To be able to form a number of complex sentences using different sentence structures

Year 6

• To be secure in a range of text types
• To use a range of punctuation (-;:)