English, including phonics

Phonics and early reading

We follow Phonics Bug Synthetic Phonics Programme to teach phonics in EYFS and Key Stage 1 and the accompanying individual reading books to support the programme. All teaching and support staff have accessed phonics training led by the Phonics Bug team and use this knowledge when teaching and supporting children to throughout the school.

Children who are developing their early reading skills, will bring home a phonics-based reading book to support their in-school phonics learning. We also encourage children to read other books in school and at home, with the support of parents/carers: reading for pleasure is vital to develop a positive view of reading and to build the foundations of life-long readers.

Reading book bands

Discussions with older children, showed that they felt they would read more without feeling restricted with book banding and thus, would have greater enjoyment in reading. Therefore, the majority of our junior children no longer work through reading book bands and access books from our range of non book-banded books.

For some children, who may find reading a little more challenging, teaching staff may feel that it would be beneficial to continue to read banded books. The aim of this is to further build up key, foundational vocabulary and reading skills including fluency and accuracy, which will support reading comprehension. We will also encourage these children to choose non-banded books to read alongside their banded book.

Reading comprehension and writing

We are excited to be working with Literacy Tree for our reading comprehension (Literary Leaves) and writing (Writing Roots) curriculum.

Rationale

Why Literacy Tree?

Award-winning scheme:

Award-winning texts and authors: many of the texts and authors studied, have won awards such as The Carnegie Medal Award and Waterstones Children's Book Awards.

Authors include children's laureates (past and present) Michael Rosen, Lauren Child, Malorie Blackman, Joseph Coelho and Julia Donaldson; modern classics such as Roald Dahl and Michael Morpurgo and more historical classics such as Oscar Wilde, C.S. Lewis and Shakespeare.

Teaching through a text: reading comprehension and writing will be taught through texts. This is a core strength of the scheme. This means our writing tasks and reading comprehension will be fully linked to the texts being studied. This way of teaching allows stronger learning links for the children and reinforces key learning points more effectively.

Diversity: this scheme is so diverse and has such a rich text choice! From the authors' and characters' backgrounds to the content being a celebration of diversity in ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender and economic background, the texts studied will really broaden our children's awareness of our world.

The diverse range of themes also includes environmental matters, acceptance and tolerance & bravery and difference.

Coverage: the way the scheme is planned, objectives are revisited within and across year groups, meaning that children have the opportunity to practise and consolidate learning. The planning is progressive and sequential with the objectives becoming more challenging as the children move through year groups and the sequence allowing for a gradual build-up of skills.

Adaptability: whilst creating consistency and clear structure with planning, the scheme allows teachers to adapt the planning provided, to meet the needs of our children here at Burbage.

Writing opportunities: Literacy Tree Writing Roots, mean that children are writing regularly, both shorter and longer pieces, to embed their skills.

Cross-curricular links: throughout the scheme, there are links with areas of the curriculum other than English. This allows children to make links between different areas of learning, building on what they already know, and to revisit learning which takes place at different points throughout the year.

Planning, coverage and progression

English long-term plans

This plan shows long-term plans for the whole school. Highlighted books are those which we have studied so far. As this is a new scheme for Burbage this year, staff are choosing texts on a term-by-term basis; the plan will be updated with each term.

english wholeschoolcurriculummap autumn spring 1.pdf

english year1curriculummap.pdf

english year2curriculummap.pdf

english year3curriculummap.pdf

english year4curriculummap.pdf

english year5curriculummap.pdf

english year6curriculummap.pdf

Enrichment

Short-story competition

During the summer term 2023, two of our Year 6 children led and judged a whole school, story writing competition.

We had lots of brilliant entries from across the school. Below, you will find our overall winner's story and stories written by our runners up. A huge 'Well done!' to all who took part in the competition.

Winner

winner year 4.pdf

Runner-up - EYFS

tillys story.pdf

Runner-up - Year 2

year 2 runner up.pdf

Each year, we take part in World Book Day celebrations, dressing up, hosting book-related quizzes, joining in with World Book Day live lessons and much more, as planned by class teachers.

We also run whole school events such as Reading Bingo and sponsored reads to raise money for charity as well as school. During 2022-23, we raised money for children's wards to be able to have new books and to receive visits from storytellers.

At the end of each term, we have our Reading Raffle to promote and encourage reading outside of school. Children have the opportunity, throughout the term, to earn Reading Raffle Tickets; the winner of each class is then drawn at the end of term before they choose a new book to take home.

Pupil Reading Ambassadors spread their love of reading across the school as they talk about the books they love, making recommendations to others; hold story times and even have assembly slots to talk about their favourite books and authors. This year, they will also help with the planning of events such as World Book Day celebrations.

Our Library on the bus is the perfect place to enjoy Storytime, hold quiet reading sessions or borrow a book from.

Keep your eyes peeled in school, for grown-ups wearing Ask Me What I'm Reading badges. Adults in our school love to read and talk about what they are reading so are happy to be asked, 'What are you reading?' throughout the day.

Our teachers plan lots of lovely experiences to write about, such as going on a trip or welcoming a visitor. We always make a point of writing to our visitors to thank them for visiting and sharing their knowledge and experiences with us. They're always a great opportunity to ask lots of questions, too!

British Values

The English curriculum provides fantastic opportunities to promote British values through speaking and listening tasks, such as debating, and diversity through choice of author and text. Diversity is something that is a key area of development for us currently, as we strive to provide our children with as much knowledge and understanding as possible, about our excitingly diverse world.