English at Wyvern
Reading
Reading at Wyvern encourages all children to develop a love of reading.
We aim for reading to expand their horizons, build their creativity and unlock their imaginations. We have devloped our own Literature Spine so that children experience a wealth of authors, a range of quality texts and diverse characters. In their time at Wyvern, our children become confident, active readers and equip themselves with a skill for life. We promote a love of reading through library visits, book fairs, author visits and celebrating World Book Day.
At the beginning of their reading journey, children are taught phonics following the ALS model. This teaches them, through discrete phonics sessions, to decode words and blend sounds together leading into reading full sentences.
The children are encouraged to read and share books at home. In all year groups, children read banded books based on their ability levels. We use two reading schemes for this: Bug Club and Big Cat Collins. In EYFS and Key Stage 1 these books will be phonically decodable, linked to the sounds they already know. Children are heard reading regularly in school and an adult will check their decoding, fluency and their understanding.
We encourage home reading as much as possible, please support your child by listening to them read. Children who regularly read at home are entered into a reading raffle where they may win a book to keep. You could ask them questions to check that they have understood what they have read.
Examples of some questions that you could use:
- What can you tell me about the main character?
- What has been the best bit about the book so far?
- What do you think will happen next? Why?
- Who in your class would like this book and why?
- Is this book like any other books that you have read?
- What can you picture in your head when you are reading this part?
- How is the character feeling and how do you know?
- How would you feel if you were the main character?
Writing
Talk for Writing
Alongside ALS phonics, EYFS and KS1 have adopted the Talk for Writing (T4W) approach using our Literature Spine. This approach develops children’s writing through the use of talk, thinking, creativity and exploring.
Children are given the chance to experience a text and learn it verbally. This is enhanced with short bursts of writing to develop grammar, understanding and reading of the text. The children are also encouraged to use drama throughout this process; always developing their language.
In EYFS, T4W concentrates on developing oral storytelling. Teachers allow children to practise innovating and inventing stories regularly through role play areas, small world and helicopter stories. Year 1 children transition between verbally inventing and starting to write their own stories. In Year 2 children are given the opportunity to regularly write and create their own stories using skills learnt in the previous years.
KS2 Writing
The children work on writing from a range of different types of text using our Literature Spine. This includes fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Over the year, we build up the children’s writing skills by introducing new skills, practising them in a shorter piece of writing and then using them alongside other skills in longer pieces. Writing is linked to a book that we are looking at in class as this helps the children to get lots of ideas in their own work as well as teaching them to appreciate a wider range of books and authors.
In all year groups, children will always edit and improve their work. This means that they will check that the grammar and punctuation are correct but they will also try to improve their sentences to make them even better.
Handwriting
At Wyvern, our children are proud of their work and we encourage neat presentation in all subjects. As part of this, we focus on neat, joined handwriting.
The children start their handwriting journey in KS1 with learning to form their letters so that they are all the same size and are neatly on the line.
During Year 1, the children will learn to write in pre cursive letters which means that the letters are not joined but they are ready to be joined later in school. By the time the children are in Year 2, we expect them to be using the pre cursive letters consistently and some children may be starting to join.
During KS2 (Years 3-6) the children will start to join their letters consistently in all of their work. The children might start to develop their own style of fluent, joined handwriting and they will continue to practise this throughout Key Stage 2. It is important that the children use their neatest writing whenever they are working, including in their home learning.
During Year 5 the children will start to use a pen.
Spellings
Every week, the children are set spellings to learn that week. Please try to practise these spellings with your children as much as possible at home. The weekly spellings often focus on certain spelling patterns or rules. We also encourage the children to learn the common exception words from their year group as these are the words that they often find trickiest to spell.
The class teachers may suggest different and creative ways for the children to practise their spellings as this can often help them to learn them. Please continue to work on previous week’s spellings with your child so that they do not forget the spellings that they have already been tested on.
