For pupils, understanding language provides access to the whole curriculum. It underpins all lessons and is explicitly taught in its own right.

At Fielding, the skills and knowledge of the English curriculum are taught through discrete lessons of English, phonics, reading, handwriting, spelling  and daily story times.

Speaking and Listening

Speaking and Listening underpins all learning. If a child cannot say it, they cannot write it. Pupils are taught to speak in complete sentences clearly, confidently and with expression in order to communicate their ideas and feelings. They are taught to understand and use the conventions for discussion and debate and orally rehearse their writing. For Years 1-6, their speaking and listening skills are incorporated in to the Speaking, Listening and Writing Progression Map. For Nursery and Reception, Spoken Language Progression Maps are separate. 

The importance of early reading, our approach to teaching phonics

At Fielding phonics is taught through the systematic acquisition of sounds using the synthetic phonics programme, Ruth Miskin’s ‘Read Write Inc.’

Phonics is the method of teaching children to read by linking sounds (phonemes) and their symbols (graphemes). Phonics lessons begin during spring term in Nursery and following baseline assessments in Reception for those who join from other settings.

Children are introduced to 'single sounds' such as /p/, /o/ and practise recognising them, writing them and 'blending' them. 'Blending' is the ability to combine sounds together in order to create a word. Teaching staff ensure all phonemes are pronounced purely, without an additional 'uh' on the end of each sound – known as 'schwa' - which can potentially confuse children when combining the sounds together into words, for example:

/p/ /o/ /t/ = pot        (correct)        
/puh/ /o/ /tuh/ = puhotuh      (incorrect)    

Phonics lessons continue throughout Reception and Year 1 when children are exposed to more complex phonemes such as 'ay' in 'stay' and 'ee' in 'see'.  Pupils are taught that these sounds are called 'digraphs' because 'two letters represent one sound', or 'trigraphs' when 'three letters make one sound' such as /air/ in 'fair'. In order to help children decode each word, dots (for single sounds) and dashes (for digraphs and trigraphs) are marked under words.

 The 'Phonics Screening Check' is taken individually by all children in Year 1 and is designed to give feedback to teachers and parents on how each child is progressing in Phonics. Pupils are asked to read 20 real words and 20 pseudo words, known to the children as 'alien words', in order to ensure children are decoding the words instead of memorising or guessing. ‘Alien words’ are introduced to children in Reception.

The Simple View of Reading theory underpins our approach to early reading according to which confident readers have the ability to:

• decode a word
• comprehend the meaning of each word they read

The absence of any of the above skills will result in a child having weak reading skills. 

All children have explicit phonics lessons throughout their first three years at school, starting from Nursery in order to ensure they have enough time to become secure with their decoding skills. Phonics teaching is accompanied by Read Write Inc ‘Grapheme, Phoneme, Correspondence’ ditty books which are read in buddy-reading pairs and during Guided Reading with the teacher. These books correspond to the sound that is currently being learned. ‘Read Write Inc Home books’ are sent home to further consolidate the learned sound and increase pupils’ success with reading. Gradually, pupils are exposed to a variety of texts which build their comprehension skills and their vocabulary throughout the curriculum. As a result of this, children become confident readers early on and shift from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn.’

For a more detailed breakdown of our phonics teaching see our map below.

Phonics map

Whole Class Teaching of Reading 

Once children are competent with phonics and able to read words, the focus of reading switches to fluency and understanding. From the Summer term in Year 2, teachers use the whole class teaching of reading approach to teach reading fluency and comprehension. Teachers focus on high-quality, ‘beautiful’ texts for these lessons, which allow them to focus on the skills needed for their year group. During the session the children may practise their reading fluency, be taught explicit vocabulary, and develop their comprehension skills.

Storytime/ Book Club

From Nursery through to Year 6, every class has a daily story time session. Children listen to a range of stories, poems and non-fiction texts which have been carefully chosen to develop children’s knowledge of the world around them, to build knowledge of vocabulary and establish an appreciation and love of reading. 

Years 1-6 attend Book Club in the library where books are chosen linked to the interests of the class, curriculum, authors of whole class reading books and for a love a reading. They may act out stories before choosing a library book to borrow.

Pupils move through the phonics stages as detailed in our phonics map. Once they have mastered the sounds within our programme and begin to read fluently, they will move on to our banded books. These books have been banded based on 'lexile' ratings to ensure they read and explore a range of vocabulary.

Pupils take home two reading books. One from our banded books and one of interest, this could be from the recommended reading list or from the school library. This could be a book they can read by themselves or one they will read together with an adult at home.

Recommended Reading lists

Our recommended reading lists contain 50 age-appropriate books for children in each year group. We have taken the time to carefully choose books that will hopefully capture children's imagination and develop a rich vocabulary. The lists contain colour-bands and a description of the books so that the children are able to 'cherry-pick' their favourites according to their lexile-band level and their personal interests. It is expected that all children will read all 50 books, achieving award certificates as they do so.

Inspiring our pupils to read.

Find our what got some of our teachers into reading!

Writing

Writing at Fielding is taught through a systematic approach with speaking embedded within it. In Early Years, the children are taught to write letters they know the phonic sound of, before putting these together to write simple words and then progressing to writing simple sentences. They learn to verbally retell stories to build up their vocabulary and story telling language which they can then apply to their writing in Year 1.

Years 1-6 follow the same writing framework covering a wide variety of genres of writing. Children begin with a ‘cold write’ to demonstrate their knowledge of that genre and informing the teacher of their starting point. They then analyse good samples of that genre, are taught the grammar and punctuation skills and then write, edit, self-assess and complete a final draft which demonstrates their learning. The children then complete a ‘free write’ where they apply their knowledge of the genre to an independent piece of writing.

Spelling

At Fielding, we follow the Read, Write Inc Spelling scheme, which follows on from our phonics teaching. The children begin this in Year 2 and receive explicit lessons weekly, after which lists are sent home for the children to practise. They then apply their spelling knowledge in to a dictation at school.

Handwriting

All children receive an explicit handwriting lesson each week following the Teach Handwrite Scheme. This is then followed up throughout the week with independent practise. More information can be found on their website. https://teachhandwriting.co.uk/ 

English policy

Click the link below to be taken to our policy page.