English
Here at Catforth we take pride in the fact that our children are excited by and become confident writers. We follow Talk4Writing which teaches children text models to help them embed text types, which in turn supports their own writing. There are three parts to Tak4Writing; Imitation, innovation and independence. Within our English lessons, we use a variety of activities to develop ideas of plot, character and setting. They can consist of drama, language development, text analysis, comprehension, grammar and even art. Children are taught to read as a writer so they can develop a firm understanding of how vocabulary, punctuation and grammar effect their audience.
English Documents:
English Curriculum Texts
English Policy
Reading
Reading strategies and comprehension are taught through Guided Reading in addition to English lessons. This enables all children to access age related texts through supportive and demonstrative application of skills whilst becoming active and independent readers. Children have weekly guided reading sessions which teaches them key comprehension skills.
Home reading books are sent home with the children and they are encouraged to read daily.
Each class teacher reads to the children at the end of the day to develop a love of reading.
Each class has a reading corner to promote a love of reading for pleasure.
Phonics and Reading
Click here for a short explanation of phonics teaching, including the sounds we use or here to hear and see the sounds only.
Like most primary schools, we use a method of teaching called 'synthetic Phonics' to help children learn to read and spell. Phonics is one method of teaching children how to read and write. It's all about sounds. There are 44 sounds in the English language, which we put together to form words. Some are represented by one letter, like 't', and some by two or more, like 'ck' in duck and 'air' in chair. Children are taught the sounds first, then which letters represent the sounds and finally how to use their phonic knowledge to blend sounds for reading and segment them for spelling. Synthetic phonics refers to 'synthesising', or blending, the sounds to read words. It's based on the idea that children should sound out unknown words and not rely on their context.
The 44 sounds (phonemes) of the English language, and the way they are written down, are taught one by one. The order of teaching these sounds has been specially developed so that children can start reading complete words as soon as possible. A phonics lesson begins with revising any sounds the children have already been taught. Then the teacher will introduce a new sound and its spelling.
We use a teaching scheme called 'Letters and Sounds' to teach Synthetic Phonics. This scheme is split into 6 Phases with the children starting Phase 2 in Reception and moving through to Phase 6 by Year 2-3.
For reading, we have a range of phonically decodable home school readers, divided into colour bands which are closely linked to the Letters and Sounds phonics phases.
Click here for some more information on the Year 1 Phonics Check.
English 23
English at Catforth Primary School
