On entry to Grendon School in Reception children begin their phonics education. Phonics is taught through Read, Write Inc. phonics as 20 minute daily lessons. Phonics is taught in ability groupings. This enables the children to quickly become readers and decode words and sentences as the books they read are matched to their phonics ability.

Once children are able to read fluently, children in KS1 and KS2 are taught comprehensions skills through Reciprocal Reading. Children are taught how to predict, clarify, answer questions and summarise a wide variety of texts. The children work as groups to discuss ideas and justify and evaluate opinions about books. Children are allowed time to read for pleasure and read their choice or books, newspapers and magazines to foster a love of reading. Children in KS2 have daily reciprocal reading sessions as well as a weekly lesson.

Children are then able to transfer the skills acquired across all other subject areas and into their homework where they share or read books together each week. In KS2 children are also asked to write reviews of the books that they have read.

Phonics is taught in ability groups so all children are receiving phonics education at their level. Similarly, when children are just at the decoding stage of reading their book is well –matched to their phonics level, allowing children to be successful. Reading lessons are differentiated so that all children read texts at the appropriate level.

Communication underpins Reciprocal Reading it begins with the clarifying stage where new words are identified and meanings learnt helping to broaden children their vocabulary. Children engage in discussions about books, developing their communication skills further as they put forward ideas and shape them as a group. This allows children to develop resilience as ideas are challenged and justified. Children develop independence through reading for pleasure and using skills they have learnt to tackle their chosen books.

Respect is promoted through respectfully agreeing and disagreeing about others opinions about texts, understanding that we all have different like and dislikes when it come choosing books.

Children need a good standard of Reading for the future and life in modern Britain. At Grendon, our approach ensures that children are well equipped with the lifelong reading skills they will been as well as a love of reading.

 

Writing is taught regularly at Grendon and the skills taught are transferred directly to other subject areas. Children learn to write in different genres such as, instructions, balanced, arguments, poetry, stories and more.

The writing process begins by reading a WAGOLL (What A Good One Looks Like) and thinking about the audience and purpose of the writing. Then identifying why it is a good piece of writing and what language features have been used.

Next the children are then taught how to use those language features in a series of skills lessons before they then imitate the WAGOLL and write their own version. Children identify the language features they have used in their work by highlighting them. This gives them the independence and resilience to recognise if they have produced a good piece of writing, as well as then considering what they could do to improve next time and set their own next step.

The children then enter the Innovation phase of writing where they think about how they could add their own creativity to the next piece of writing, for example can they change the setting, they main character from good to bad? Can their non-fiction writing be based on a different area of knowledge?  More skills lessons are taught so the children have the skills to succeed with their Innovation writing. The children again use highlighting to show the language features used and then they edit their work for spelling, punctuation and grammar as well as word choice.

This writing is then the children’s final piece and work and their hard work and achievements as an author are celebrated as they read their work to their peers.

Children are then able to transfer the skills acquired across all other subject areas.

Spellings are part of children’s homework weekly.

All writing lessons are differentiated to ensure that all children can achieve. For all children, oral rehearsal of what they are going to write is an important part of the process. Time is given to generate and try out ideas for writing as a whole class. This helps to remove barriers by giving the children the confidence to know what they want to write and they can then be given the appropriate support to record their ideas.

We track children’s progress across the subjects and support is quickly put in place to close any gaps in learning.

Learning to write is a huge part of being able to communicate confidently. The way that writing is taught at Grendon gives the children independence when writing because they are clearly taught what language features are needed to be successful and the children take ownership of showing that they have used them. They are taught to be resilient by understanding that we all can make mistakes in writing but we can improve our work at the editing stage and that editing is part of the writing process.

Children celebrate their writing after their final piece by reading it to peers, who then tell them all the things they like and did well in their writing showing respect for one another as authors.

Children need a good standard of written English for the future and life in modern Britain. At Grendon, we firmly believe that the way that we teach writing prepares children well for the future as well as fostering a love of writing.

Oxford Owl - This site has lots of useful information about Maths, Reading and writing. It also has games and ideas for things to do.

Teach Your Monster to Read - covers everything from letters and sounds to reading full sentences

Look, Cover, Write, Check - A spelling game

Squiggle Park - Choose between early reading skills or older comprehension - create a log in for free to access 

Storylineonline - Listen to a range of stories online

Teach your Monster to Read - A fabulous reading resource

Pick a Phoneme - Learn your sounds with this interactive game

PhonicsPlay - A great phonics website

Phonics Bloom - More fantastic phonics resources

Spelling Shed - keep practising those spellings! (14 day trial)