Newsletters
English
Reading
Intent
When children leave Kempsey Primary School we want them to have a love for reading and be able to independently access the skills required to understand and answer questions on a range of fiction and non-fiction texts. At KPS, we guide pupils in constructing ‘mental models’ of texts to build and deepen understanding. We do this with the aim of having fluent readers throughout the school, that are confident in accessing a variety of texts.
Implementation
Reading sessions take place 4 times a week at KPS. Each session has a different focus.
Session 1- Teacher reading aloud
Teacher to read an extract of a text (of any type) to children. Read the full extract without stopping for discussion or explanation. (15 mins)
Teacher to read text extract again, this time often pausing to:
Explain new words
Explain new language patterns and ideas
E.G:
Think aloud which character the pronoun ‘he’ refers to in a sentence
Think aloud about the content of the text, e.g. an unexpected plot twist
Introduce new vocab by explaining keywords
Sharing new vocabulary
Connecting text to pupils' own experiences.
Session 2- Pupil reading
Children read individually, or in pairs.
Partnered reading can be effective with pupils taking in turns to read aloud a sentence, paragraph or page.
It’s important to ensure that pupils are clear about what their role is when ‘listening’. Are they listening to offer feedback, or concentrating on the meaning of a text?
Time should be spent here on developing fluency through effective modelling and feedback. It also requires teachers to have chosen a book suitable for that learner.
Session 3- Teacher modelling
Demonstrating what skilled readers do to create mental models of texts.
Teachers read the same extract of text and stop occasionally to think aloud, commenting as they read.
You might:
Model how ideas in the text and ideas from pupils’ background knowledge are combined to make meaning
Show how to decode unfamiliar words, and explain/find out their meaning
Comment and consider the impact of specific words or phrases
Model how skilled readers fill in gaps as they read.
Session 4- Questioning
Effective questioning to deepen understanding, promoting pupils to think about the text they have read.
Questions must be text-specific.
Questions to incorporate the 6 reading domains:
Vocabulary
Inference
Predictions
Explanations
Retrieval
Sequencing/Summarising
(VIPERS question stems)
Whole school reading progression
Helpful Reading Questions
Writing
Implementation
At Kempsey Primary School we have adopted ‘The Write Stuff’ by Jane Considine to bring clarity and consistency to the mechanics of writing and to enable our children to write effectively and coherently. As a school, all children from Year 1 to Year 6 learn to write through the Write Stuff approach. This was developed by teacher and leading English consultant, Jane Considine. It is a fun, creative and rigorous approach to developing children’s writing. This approach allows children to apply basic skills, vocabulary and grammar knowledge to write effective sentences, which are full of impact and keep the reader interested.
In The Write Stuff approach to writing, the children explore high-level, rich vocabulary and are taught grammar in context through different writing lenses on the Writing Rainbow. There are three lenses used to support children with their writing:
Fantastics – ideas for writing
Grammaristics – tools for writing
Boomtastics – writing techniques
The Write Stuff is based on two guiding principles; teaching sequences that slide between experience days and sentence stacking lessons.
As part of the teaching sequence, teachers plan experience days; sentence stacking lessons and independent writing sequences. Experience days immerse children in experiences linked to their writing and drench them in vocabulary related to the lenses in ‘The Writing Rainbow’. From the experience days, children take part in sentence stacking lessons. Sentence stacking lessons focus on writing three sentences with a focus on the lenses of the rainbow.
‘The Write Stuff’ follows a method called ‘Sentence Stacking’ which refers to the fact that sentences are stacked together and organised to engage children with short, intensive moments of learning that they can then immediately apply to their own writing.
An individual lesson is based on one plot point from the text, broken into three learning chunks:
- 1. Initiate section – a stimulus to capture the children’s imagination and set up a sentence.
- 2. Model section – the teacher models a sentence that outlines apparent writing features and techniques.
- 3. Enable section – the children write their sentences, following the teacher’s model.
This part of the unit is heavily scaffolded with lots of teacher input and modelling of vocabulary use, sentence construction and use of grammar with reference to the 3 writing lenses.
During the initiate section children ‘chot’ (chat and jot) down their ideas from stimulating resources, such as pictures, music and drama. The children are encouraged to use ‘kind calling out’ where they call out examples of vocabulary, adverbs, onomatopoeia etc.
During the Model section, the teacher prepares children for writing by modelling the ideas, grammar and techniques of writing taken from the writing rainbow.
In the Enable section pupils write their own sentences, taking the opportunity to deepen the moment. ‘Deepen the Moment’ is where children are challenged to independently draw upon previously learnt skills and apply them to their writing during that chunk.
Following the sentence stacking, children are given the opportunity to show what they have learnt by planning and writing their own independent pieces of writing. After they have written their independent piece, their work is marked by the class teacher who identifies different aspects of their written piece to be edited. There are 3 elements to the editing;
E1 Edit: The Revise
Edit Type 1: These are often ‘little’ adjustments or changes and tend to fall into one of these categories; Spellings Missing words or Punctuation
E2 Edit: The Rewrite
Edit Type 2: Children are asked to re-write a sentence if it doesn’t make sense, could be restructured or generally improved.
E3 Edit: The Reimagine
Edit Type 3: This is when a writer wants to add more sentences to develop an idea further. For this, the children are shown how to use ‘editing flaps’.
Editing flaps are extra pieces of paper that stick onto their writing and show the additional sentences added to their work.
The Write Stuff provides a balance of narrative, non-fiction and poetry writing throughout each term.
Impact
Having followed the Write Stuff approach to developing their writing skills children should be able to
- write for a range of purposes including diary entries, persuasive letters, stories, poems and recounts to name but a few.
- use their vast knowledge of vocabulary to excite, inform or entertain the reader.
- understand a range of punctuation and the effect it can have on the reader in both writing and reading.
- understand and be able to use a range of grammatical devices.
- understand the various sentence types that can be used to support different genres.
- spell accurately using their phonetic knowledge and apply spelling rules.
- to speak clearly, fluently and coherently, to be able to listen attentively with understanding, pleasure and empathy and contribute to group discussions