English
English
English at Manor is about immersing children in reading and writing, taking them on a journey of learning, which provides them with rich and purposeful learning opportunities. At Manor, we want our children to develop a love of reading and use this to ensure that all children leave our school as skilled and passionate speakers, readers and writers. This will provide our pupils with firm foundations which support them as they become independent learners who can access all areas of the curriculum, and continue to apply this in academic studies for their future endeavours.
Integrated within the curriculum, high quality texts lead the children’s learning to provide an exciting, engaging learning experience where all children are able to succeed.
Careful text choices are made to ensure that all children experience a rich, wide and varied reading and writing diet on their journey through the school. All children will explore a range of different high quality class texts, written by varied writers and set in different cultures and historical periods, promoting and embracing equality and diversity. These are tracked through year group overviews to ensure these texts are built on progressively. In addition to this, teachers ensure that a wide range of genres are explored including fiction, non-fiction and poetry on a termly basis, making many links to the children’s Learning Journeys.
Learning environments are key to ensuring children are deeply immersed in this rich learning experience. Working Walls are used in each classroom to guide and aid our pupils’ through the learning process. Careful consideration and teaching of the different tiers of vocabulary provided in each text, promotes and encourages a greater use of higher level word choice for all children, exposing this vocabulary to the most disadvantaged children and challenging and extending the thinking of our most able. This vocabulary is displayed in the classroom to help all children to master applying fantastic language in their own writing.
Reading is an integral part of the curriculum at Manor. All children will be taught to develop their language comprehension and word recognition skills, ensuring progression through consistent practice across the key stages. Regular Guided Practice sessions ensure word recognition is taught progressively using ROPES skills, whilst VIPERS are used to deepen children’s language comprehension, and many opportunities are provided for children to apply their reading into their own writing. Reading environments are a welcoming space to instil a passion for reading. All staff at Manor, as well as parents and carers, play a part in developing our children as skilled, confident and life-long readers.
The importance of speaking and communicating is widely recognised at Manor as enabling children to explore their ideas as a writer. Grammar learning opportunities are carefully planned for and applied frequently in reading into writing activities from the key text being studied. Teachers’ modelling supports children with the writing process and exposes children to the thinking process of a writer. Handwriting and spelling is taught in small regular discrete sessions, but expectations for application are also shared frequently during the modelling process encouraging children to help build their writing fluency.
Pupils at Manor will make good or better progress from their starting points to achieve their full potential. Appropriate modelling and scaffolding will mean all pupils of all abilities will be able to succeed in all English lessons. They will leave primary school being confident and skilled speakers, readers and writers.
Children will be able to read for both pleasure and to further their learning. They will use their own experiences of reading as well as the class text to become skilled and confident writers. They will be able to write at length and explore how to use language to engage their own reader through adventurous word choices. Children will be able to read and write for different purposes and audiences, and will enjoy applying this across a range of different genres.
Early Reading and Phonics
At Manor, we recognise that learning to read is one of the most important skills a child will develop. Becoming a confident and fluent reader opens the door to learning across the whole curriculum and helps children develop their vocabulary, imagination and understanding of the world around them.
We are committed to ensuring that every child develops strong foundations in reading from the very beginning of their time with us, giving them the skills, confidence and enthusiasm to become successful lifelong readers.
Our Approach to Phonics
At Manor, we use Supersonic Phonic Friends, a systematic synthetic phonics programme, to teach children the skills they need to become confident readers and spellers.
Through engaging, carefully structured and progressive teaching, children learn to recognise the relationship between the sounds they hear in spoken language and the letters or groups of letters used to represent those sounds in writing.
Children are taught how to use their phonic knowledge to blend sounds together to read words and to segment words into sounds to support spelling and writing.
Phonics is taught systematically and progressively. Children build securely on what they already know before moving on to new sounds and skills, helping them to develop confidence and independence in their reading and writing.
Reading Books
To support the phonics learning taking place in school, your child will bring home a carefully matched reading book. The book will contain sounds and words that closely reflect the phonics your child has been learning and is individual to their stage of development.
We encourage children to read their book three times, with each read having a different purpose:
First read – Decoding
Children use their phonic knowledge to sound out and blend unfamiliar words.
Second read – Fluency
As the words become more familiar, children can concentrate on reading smoothly, accurately and with increasing expression.
Third read – Comprehension
Once children are reading the text more fluently, they can focus on understanding and discussing what they have read.
Re-reading familiar books is an important part of learning to read. As children become increasingly secure with the words and sentences, less attention is needed for decoding and more can be given to fluency, expression and understanding.
When your child is secure and confident with the sounds and skills they are currently learning, they will progress to the next stage of their phonics journey. Their reading book will be changed accordingly so that it continues to provide the right level of challenge and practice.
Developing a Love of Reading
While phonically appropriate books are essential for practising the skills children are learning in school, reading is about much more than learning to decode words.
We want every child at Manor to discover the enjoyment that books and reading can bring.
We therefore strongly encourage families to share a wide variety of books at home alongside their child's school reading book. Stories, picture books, traditional tales, poetry, information books and favourite books chosen by children themselves all have an important part to play.
Reading and sharing books together helps children to develop their vocabulary, comprehension, imagination and knowledge of the world. Just as importantly, it helps children discover the pleasure of stories, language and reading for its own sake.
Children do not need to be able to read these books independently. Listening to an adult read, talking about pictures and characters, predicting what might happen next and simply enjoying a story together are all valuable reading experiences.
Working Together
Parents and carers play a vital role in supporting children as they learn to read. Regular reading at home, alongside the systematic phonics teaching children receive in school, helps them practise their developing skills and build confidence.
By working together, home and school can help every child develop both the skills they need to read successfully and a love of reading that we hope will stay with them throughout their lives.
https://www.supersonicphonicfriends.co.uk/
At Manor, we use the 21 Steps from Kent to ensure our children receive timely learning in small steps. This ensures children complete their program of study for the year and allows for further challenge and support to be planned for.
Please see our yearly overviews to find out about more about the rich learning experiences linked to high quality texts in each year group.
Please see our Book Lists recommending quality reads for children in each year group. These
can also be found in the back of your child’s reading diary. We hope you enjoy these
wonderful reads!