Welcome to our English page

Mrs L Lawrence & Mrs R Kaur

English Leaders

The ability to read widely, think critically and strategically, and communicate is essential.  At Ryvers School, we teach these fundamental skills through an exciting and creative curriculum centred around our children’s needs.  We believe in a balanced and rigorous approach to teaching English and transferring learned skills across each curricular area. Effective English is intrinsically purposeful, flexible and dynamic, and continues to develop throughout an individual’s lifetime.

We help our children to achieve by explicitly modelling and teaching, reading, writing and oracy strategies.  We ensure extensive time is given to support critical and creative discussions, sharing texts and providing purposeful reading, writing, speaking and listening experiences.  Promotion and enhancement of home-school links in English at the forefront of our thinking.

We believe that English is vital to a child’s education and promotes an appreciation and love of reading, and lifelong learning.

Reading

“Reading for pleasure is the single most important thing that will make a child successful in life.” (UNESCO)

The National Curriculum for English places reading for pleasure at the heart of the English curriculum. Our text based approach allows children to immerse themselves in great literature, opening them up to ideas, experiences, places and times they might never otherwise experience in real life. 

Every class is read to by their class teacher daily, which the children really enjoy.  This is a time set aside to enjoy reading for pleasure. In addition, whole class reading lessons using high quality texts, give our pupils the opportunity to hear and discuss both fiction and non-fiction texts; these may link to a year group topic or be chosen as an example of a classic children's book. 

Each class has a reading trolley and/or display boxes containing a wide range of books which reflect our community, which the class librarians are responsible for.  The use of class reading scrapbooks allows our pupils to share their opinion of a favourite book whilst encouraging their peers to read books which are new to them.  We are also fortunate to have playground reading sheds and a well-stocked school library, run by an experienced school librarian, which each class visits once a week.

We believe in a strong sense of community and provide opportunities for children to display their English skills and achievements through planned special events eg. author visits, assemblies, school plays, nativities, individual speaking, debates, etc. At the heart of our curriculum, the principal aim is that children leave our school with a wide range of happy memories in English formed through exciting enrichment activities beyond the classroom.

Writing

Our approach to the teaching of writing has a strong focus on choosing vocabulary and grammar to create specific effects on the audience. Children work together to choose vocabulary and the teacher models how to use this - alongside specific elements of grammar or punctuation - within sentences before the children write their own versions. The structure of our lessons helps to minimise cognitive load for the children.  In addition, some writing units are chosen to explore a text in greater detail, and the children then have the opportunity to respond by writing in a variety of genres eg. a character description, a letter of complaint and a newspaper article.  In addition, we timetable sentence level lessons twice a week and in KS2 we run termly writing clubs to encourage writing for pleasure.

Oracy

Throughout our English lessons we are introducing the teaching of oracy - using the Voice 21 strategies - in order for our pupils to become more effective speakers and listeners and to empower them to better understand themselves, each other and the world around them. Oracy is also a route to social mobility, empowering all pupils, not just some, to find their voice to succeed in school and life.  

Spelling

In KS2 we are using Spelling Shed to continue to apply and develop phonological knowledge. In addition, some children are taught in discrete daily sessions using the Little Wandle Rapid Catch-up Programme.

The Spelling Shed approach involves the relationship between sounds and written symbols as well as using morphology to help spell through meaning. The carefully selected word lists and engaging activities provide opportunities to incorporate phonics and meaning to strengthen spelling skills and build vocabulary acquisition.

Further information can be found here: 

https://www.spellingshed.com/en-gb/science-of-spelling

Letter-Join Handwriting

We have adopted the Letter-join handwriting scheme across the whole school. A particular bonus of this scheme is that your children can access it at home. They will be given their login details in September of each year.

You can watch a parents' guide to using Letterjoin here: https://www.letterjoin.co.uk/videos/homelogin.mp4 

Please click on the link below for a recommended reading list for young children.

http://www.suecowley.co.uk/100-books-for-little-people.html