Writing at Shillington Lower School
Our aims
Being able to communicate in writing is a fundamental life skill and the bedrock of communication in all subjects. Our aims with our English curriculum are to ensure that children can
- Write clearly and grammatically accurately for a range of purposes
- Write creatively and imaginatively in a range of different contexts
- Have been inspired and engaged through the use of high-quality texts and sources of writing or literature
- Understand and have developed an enjoyment of and appreciation for written literature through engagement with a culturally and historically diverse range of stories, plays, poetry and non-fiction texts
- Produce writing for a range of different purposes and audiences
Handwriting
We understand that forming letters correctly is a fundamental skill to establish and it starts in Early Years and doesn't stop there! We use the Letter-Join programme to guide us through the development of handwriting. We explicitly teach the joins and the way we shape letters so children get lots of practise of this important skill.
Writing
Essential writing is our English curriculum. This text-based curriculum introduces pupils to a wide variety / diet of rich high-quality texts. This ensures that the love of reading we are promoting is used to engage and develop the children's writing skills.
Essential writing is a progressive scheme that builds writing skills in a carefully sequenced order to ensure all children are able to become successful writers. It fulfills the requirements of the National Curriculum and aligns to the DFE Writing framework 2025.
In our Classrooms, we have working walls that support the children in class to do their best in English. The Writing pyramid is a great support.
Reading at Shillington Lower School
Our aims:
The ability to read confidently and fluently is a fundamental skill that we aim to ensure all children master. It unlocks learning in all subjects and allows children to make sense of the complex world in which we live. In all year groups we have dedicated reading lessons to ensure the phonics, decoding and comprehension skills required to be confident and fluent readers are taught.
Alongside the mechanics of reading, developing a love of reading is crucial in order to broaden children's understanding of the world and to enrich them culturally. Opportunities to read for pleasure, to choose books based on personal interest are provided every day. In our library and classroom reading corners we aim to provide children with opportunities to choose and enjoy books of all genres from a range of different topics, cultures, historical periods.
At Shillington, we want our children to learn how to read alongside building a love for reading. We use the ELS Phonics programme to teach children to read, extending the phonetic code, giving them chance to practise blending sounds to whole words and match their phonics books to practise the skill of reading. We are proud of the excellent reading outcomes our phonics programme has produced.
Whole class reading
The explicit teaching of reading is taught from year 2 alongside phonics.
At Shillington, we use a range of resources to teach reading including the Jane Considine programme of Whole class reading and alongside other carefully chosen text-based resources to ensure depth and breadth. Strategies are taught and are explicitly referred to (EEF). Children are given opportunities to practise these skills, respond to questions and complete tasks that develop these skills.
Within the reading curriculum, 7 core reading strategies are taught.
The Core 7 reading strategies
-
Activating: Link prior knowledge and personal experiences to the new text.
-
Inferring: Read between the lines to predict outcomes or deduce unstated facts.
-
Monitoring-clarifying: Check your own understanding while reading and fix it when it breaks down.
-
Questioning: Ask active questions about the author's intent, plot, or confusing words
-
Searching-selecting: Identify key themes, main ideas, and important details while scanning.
-
Summarizing: Condense the text into a brief review of the main points.
-
Visualizing-organizing: Create mental pictures or use graphic organizers to picture the scene
Our reading Spine
Listening to a story and being read to is one of the most effective ways of enabling children to become life-long readers and can be a magical highlight of a pupils’ day. Studies show this is happening less and less to children outside of school. So we are making it happen here by ensuring we are giving the right opportunities for our pupils.
At Shillington lower School we have developed a reading spine of stories and books that will be read to the children to expose them to a broad diet of different stories, cultures and genres from picture books to adventure stories for all over this world and into magical lands and beyond our planet. The choices of books aim to inspire, challenge and broaden children's experience whilst also providing enjoyment and a lifelong love of stories. Our reading spine can be found below.
Teachers may also choose additional books to our Spine based on the interests of a particular class to complement our reading offer.