English Curriculum

At North Ealing we use the RWI Phonic programme to teach children in the Early Years and Year 1 how to read and spell.

Children learn phoneme/sound correspondence and blend sounds together to read and spelling green words – phonetically decodable words.

Children also learn how to spell Red words, words which have a non-decodable element and therefore are best learned by sight and memory.

For children in Year 2 to Year 6 we use the RWI Spelling programme. This enables us to us meet the spelling expectations of the National Curriculum 2014 (Appendix 1: Spelling)

• To raise standards in spelling
• To provide consistency and progression in the teaching of spelling
• To help support children to enable them to be more confident at spelling.

How does this programme support your child in learning to spell?

RW Inc Spelling is an interactive programme which teaches spellings in a fun and engaging way. Each unit is introduced with a short video. It helps children to learn spellings with common patterns and uses rules in order to help them recall spellings as well as teaching exceptions to these rules.

The teaching naturally follows on from the RWI phonics programme taught as soon as the children enter North Ealing. Therefore the children are already proficient at using dots (for individual sounds) and dashes (for Special Friends/digraphs and trigraphs) and prefixes and suffixes can be added to root words to help them to spell with greater accuracy, understanding and confidence. Weekly spelling lists are taken home for children to practise and consolidate their spelling.

English Appendix – Spellings – Click here

Spoken language underpins the development of reading and writing. The quality and variety of language that pupils hear and speak are vital for developing their vocabulary and grammar and their understanding of reading and writing. (NC)

Speaking and listening is central to our Curriculum and is developed from EYFS throughout our school. We nurture children’s speaking and listening skills through a variety of approaches: exploratory play, storytime, hot-seating, philosophy sessions (P4C) and through collaborative learning across all subject areas.

We develop these skills so that our children are capable of expressing their own ideas clearly and confidently, in a safe and supportive environment, in all aspects and areas of their school life and into their future.

‘Outstanding reading schools believe in both the importance of developing children’s discrete word-reading skills and comprehension and the need to engender their love of books and reading. These schools recognise that the two elements are intertwined; each relies on the other if children are to become life-long readers.’

7 top tips for support reading at home

We also have a number of reading enrichment activities, including:

• Regular visits to the Library where children choose books to borrow and are read
• Regular visits from authors and poets throughout the school year
• Visits from Book Explorers
• Celebrations for World Book Week including, competitions and lots of amazing costumes!
• In addition, 1:1 reading is put in place for children that need extra practise.
• Books that the children take home are carefully chosen to match the children’s interests and their level of fluency.

Reading for Pleasure

Here at NEPS, we know that reading is an essential life skill and want our children to be lifelong readers. On leaving North Ealing our children should be confident in selecting and reading a wide range of materials and enjoy regularly reading for pleasure.

Our aim is to equip each reader with the tools to tackle unfamiliar vocabulary and diverse materials. We want our children to recommend books to their peers and enjoy reading a wide range of genres, including non-fiction. We encourage children to participate in book talk, including evaluating an author’s use of language and how this can affect the reader. We encourage our pupils to see themselves as discerning readers and to be confident in discussing not only whether they enjoy a text but also the extent to which they agree with it.

We believe reading is key for academic success and so to ensure we have a holistic approach to the teaching of reading, we implement the following:

How we teach reading

In the Early Years and Key stage 1, teachers share books, stories and information texts with children on a daily basis, which develops children’s interest and pleasure in reading and discuss what their thoughts are towards them. Throughout Reception and KS1 pupils develop their reading skills, through small group instruction so that they can become independent, fluent, skilled readers. In Year 2 whole class comprehension lessons deepen children’s ability to explore and understand a range of genres.

In Key Stage 2, whole class Reading Skills lessons develop children’s vocabulary and comprehension skills, through explicit teaching of eight reading domains which are formally tested at the end of key stage 2. Using the content domains as an underlying approach, whilst having a teaching process that focuses on the skills of understanding what is being read and creating a love of books, ensures that children have skills that last beyond school. It also promotes a passion for reading, a thirst for knowledge and a love for learning ambien no prescription which lasts a lifetime.

The Art of Teaching Writing approach in English lessons ensures quality core texts and text analysis form part of every English unit, with time built into units for children to read the texts and discuss what their thoughts are towards them. This is before they move on to applying skills of analysis, retrieval and inference to what they have read.

7 top tips for support reading at home

Reading across the curriculum

As a part of our curriculum development, we are encouraging all the children to read widely in Science, History, Geography, RE and Art. We focus on texts that are fundamental to growing knowledge, vocabulary and ideas related to each subject area.

Strategies to promote Reading for pleasure:

• Storytime timetabled for fifteen minutes a day, at least three times a week.
• Regular, open-ended discussions about stories and books across all areas of the curriculum.
• Opportunities to read and discuss a wide read of genres including poetry and non-fiction (including newspapers to ensure children are aware of local, national and global issues).
• Each classroom has a reading area that is filled with books suitable for their reading age. This is a comfortable place for children to read throughout the day.
• Children have the opportunity to take part in ‘Reading Buddies’, in which children mix with other children from different year groups and share a book together.
• Children who are not yet ‘free readers’, will work through our school reading scheme – these are levelled books which match the children’s current reading age.
• We expect families at home to read these books with their child daily and make comments on their child’s reading record.

We also have a number of reading enrichment activities, including:

• Regular visits to the Library where children choose books to borrow and are read
• Regular visits from authors and poets throughout the school year
• Visits from Book Explorers
• Celebrations for World Book Week including, competitions and lots of amazing costumes!
• In addition, 1:1 reading is put in place for children that need extra practise.
• Books that the children take home are carefully chosen to match the children’s interests and their level of fluency.

7 top tips for support reading at home

At NES we aim to provide children with the best possible experience when learning to write. We encourage our teachers to develop their own expertise and confidence as teachers of writing. Subsequently, this supports our children to become enthusiastic and effective writers who will retain a lifelong enjoyment of writing.

EYFS and Key Stage 1 writing is a skill children have to learn gradually. They begin their journey by making marks and creating patterns with a range of different materials. They may begin with large crayons making circular and straight lines- an important step in learning to write. The marks children make begin to have more meaning for children as they develop a blend of writing and drawing.

Children begin to write their first words and often their name- a wonderful breakthrough in the writing journey. Children then begin to make the connection between reading and writing and letter shapes have more meaning for them. We support the children by developing a passion for reading alongside a structured phonics programme, Read Write INC. Patience and support is the key for all the children on their reading and writing journey.

Talk for Writing

Here at NEPS we also use the Pie Corbett Talk For Writing approach to support the children’s creative approach to writing. This approach uses storytelling and rhyme to motivate children to independently create their own stories and develop language skills. This also links with our KS2 approach ‘The Art of Writing’.

Art of Teaching Writing

Writing activities, which enable children to respond to the core texts, occur throughout units so that children can write in-role, ask questions of characters or explore vocabulary or inference, which provides them with opportunities to improve their comprehension skills with a text that they exploring in depth.

Children are provided with speaking and listening and drama activities so they can rehearse using the key language and sentence features of the text orally. These activities are also designed to deepen their understanding of the text before children embark on their own writing. An experienced writer knows how to show rather than tell.

Exciting Sentences

To further enrich children’s writing a continuum of Alan Peat’s ‘Exciting Sentences’ is taught across Key Stage 1 and 2.

For more information – please read this document: Click here

Handwriting

At NES, we believe it is important to support children to develop neat, joined and consistent handwriting. We want to help children with layout, presentation and the way they organise themselves on paper. If success is achieved here, they have pride in their written work, tend to be better at spelling and are more motivated to write. Handwriting and good presentation have a high focus in our school.

Teaching staff have consistently high expectations of handwriting and presentation across all subjects and encourage children to apply handwriting skills taught across the curriculum.

We have high expectations that all children can produce neat, cursive handwriting that they are proud of.

At North Ealing we use an adapted form of the Read Write Inc letter formation programme so that it is in line with our own handwriting font – Join-It, which as the name suggests encourages children to produce neat, joined up handwriting from an early age.

For more information about Handwriting at North Ealing, please follow these links:

• Handwriting at North Ealing – Click here
• Posture and pencil grip – Click here
• Upper Case Letter and Number Formation – Click here
• Read Write Inc Letter Formation phrases – Click here