English
At Holme C of of E Primary Academy, we believe all our children (from EYFS to Y6) are entitled to an ambitious, knowledge-rich English curriculum that ensures they will become fluent readers and writers who are able to confidently access the demands of the secondary school curriculum.
What is phonics?
Phonics is the correspondence between spoken sound (phoneme) and the written letter (grapheme). It is a way of teaching children to read by breaking up words into small chunks of sound. For example we can break a simple word like ‘cat’ into the three sounds c-a-t.
To become successful readers children will learn the individual sounds for each letter or group of letters. Some sounds in English are made up of more than one letter like the sound ‘ea’ in tea or team. Once children know the sounds they will be able to ‘decode’ unfamiliar words by breaking the word into sounds then read the word by blending back together.
For example: sh — o — p = shop
Why do we teach phonics?
Research shows that when phonics is taught in a structured way - starting with the easiest sounds, progressing through to the most complex - it’s the most effective way of teaching young children to read. It’s particularly helpful or children aged 5–7. Almost all children who have good teaching of phonics will learn the skills they need to tackle new words. They can then go on to read any kind of text fluently and confidently, and to read for enjoyment.
How do we teach phonics?
At Holme C of E Primary Academy, we teach reading through Linguistic Phonics. Our approach to phonics begins in Reception and continues to Year 6. The children, as well as having reading lessons, have explicit phonics lessons throughout their time at Holme. The approach looks at the relationship between spoken language and the written word. Children will study three main skills to enable them to learn to read: blending, the skills of blending graphemes (letters) together; segmenting, separating phonemes (sounds) for spelling; and manipulating, swapping phonemes to develop accuracy in reading. Throughout Key Stage 2, the children study the origins of words which will enable them to discover the meaning of new words.
All teachers receive Sounds~Write training to aid them to deliver linguistic phonics lessons. Sounds~Write takes the children step-by-step through phonics introducing them to the 44 different sounds in the English language and their different spellings gradually and systematically.
Sounds-Write provide a free course for parents in order to help you feel more informed about the programme and also how to best support your child at home with their phonics and reading. More information about this and more useful information can be found using the button below.
Our Reading Curriculum
At Holme C of of E Primary Academy, children will learn to read with fluency and understanding, providing them with the skills required to achieve a lifetime of enjoyment through reading and allow them to access the full curriculum with confidence.
Our Reading Aims:
- Encourage and nurture a love for reading and knowledge throughout the whole school
- Help children to learn to make sense not only of the world around them but also people, building social-emotional skills and of course, imagination.
- To teach new words and perspectives. To help strengthen language and sharpen sentence structure. To give a better command over language and to promote improved speaking
- To mentally stimulate, acquire knowledge and ideas, reduce stress in their lives, improve their vocabularies and memory, and develop keener analytical skills
- To avoid ‘gist’ reading allowing children to read texts that are challenging
- A methodical approach – allowing the text to be broken down to understand why specific words are used
- To encourage a broader and deeper knowledge of a subject allowing the reader to make more accurate inferences
- To value the importance of reading as a facilitator for all other subjects, ultimately improving achievement
- To promote a strong base knowledge achieved giving the children a greater understanding of important ideas and concepts encoded into their long term memories
- To build a culture of pleasure not only in texts but also in the act of reading. Students hearing their teacher and peers read out loud with joy and expression connects them to the idea that books are relevant, worthwhile, and joyful
- To improved writing as a result of reading exposing and familiarizing children to different writing styles, expanding their vocabulary and enabling them to discover innovative ways to use interesting vocabulary
Pupils at Holme C of E Academy will leave Year 6:
- Read a broad range of genres and texts across all areas of learning
- Discuss and recommend books to others
- Learn a wide range of poetry by heart showing understanding through intonation, volume and tone
- Compare two texts
- Support inference with evidence
- Skim and scan to aid note-taking
- Create a set of notes to summarise what has been read
- Provide reasoned justifications for their view
- Distinguish between statements of fact and opinion
- Summarise main points of an argument or discussion within their reading and make up own mind about issues
- Appreciates how two people may have a different view on the same event
- Draw inferences and justify with evidence from the text
- Vary voice for direct or indirect speech
- Predict what might happen next in the text
- Discuss and evaluate how authors use language and how it impacts the reader
- Identify and discuss how language, structure and ideas contribute to meaning
- Appreciate how a set of sentences has been arranged to create maximum effect
Our Writing Curriculum
At Holme C of E Primary Academy, we aim to:
- Create an engaging curriculum, which inspires a love for writing based on audience and purpose.
- Provide children with the essential tools in spelling, grammar, punctuation and exposure to new vocabulary to support their own independent writing.
- Challenge and encourage children to use their curiosity and imagination to create their own writing.
- Support children to become independent writers with an understanding of the writing process such as planning, editing and redrafting.
- Promote a love of reading high quality texts, with a view of broadening children’s reading experiences of themes, genres and text types, (in support of writing).
- Daily SPAG sessions with 3-4 questions aimed at supporting recall of SPAG facts learnt in each year group.
- Use of the ‘Debbie Hepplewhite approach’ to handwriting. This begins in EYFS for non-cursive and moves to cursive handwriting in Year 2. From KS2, children are able to work towards achieving their pen license.
- Continuity across the school with the use of the Sounds Write spelling programme in KS2, to keep the learning of spelling consistent throughout both Key Stages.
Pupils at Holme C of E Academy will leave Year 6:
- Children will be able to independently demonstrate their knowledge of spelling, grammar and punctuation through independent writing tasks.
- Write effectively for a range of purposes and audiences, selecting language that shows good awareness of the reader (e.g. the use of the first person in a diary; direct address in instructions and persuasive writing)
- In narratives, describe settings, characters and atmosphere
- Integrate dialogue in narratives to convey character and advance the action
- Select vocabulary and grammatical structures that reflect what the writing requires, doing this mostly appropriately (e.g. using contracted forms in dialogues in narrative; using passive verbs to affect how information is presented; using modal verbs to suggest degrees of possibility)
- Use a range of devices to build cohesion (e.g. conjunctions, adverbials of time and place, pronouns, synonyms) within and across paragraphs
- Use verb tenses consistently and correctly throughout their writing
- Use the range of punctuation taught at key stage 2 mostly correctly (e.g. inverted commas and other punctuation to indicate direct speech)
- Spell correctly most words from the year 5 / year 6 spelling list, and use a dictionary to check the spelling of uncommon or more ambitious vocabulary
- Maintain legibility in joined handwriting when writing at speed
