English and Phonics
The overarching aim for English in the national curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment. The national curriculum for English aims to ensure that all pupils:
- Read easily, fluently and with good understanding.
- Develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information.
- Acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistics.
- Conventions for reading, writing and spoken language.
- Appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage.
- Write clearly, accurately, and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.
- Use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas.
- Are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate.
Here at Trinity, to ensure that the children have an opportunity to develop their skills in all of the above areas, we have adopted the Talk for Writing approach to our literacy teaching. Through Talk for Writing, children investigate and imitate a model text. This gives children the opportunity to play the tune of the tale before learning to write it. They will then develop their understanding of how to write for a particular focus by adapting the model text. The final stage of the process is to apply what they know through independent writing.
Throughout this process, we take great delight in sharing lots of other stories and literature to investigate the way the text is written and how we can learn from those authors. Children are then given lots of opportunities to practice these skills in their independent writing.
We believe that children reading for pleasure is paramount to children’s success in both reading and writing. Therefore, our approach to the teaching of reading is underpinned by a love of books. The Talk for Writing process enables children to share stories, be a part of the story creation, and create their own. During lesson time, children will also be taught a variety of skills to help them to make sense of what they’ve read, make inferences, retrieve information or ideas, sequence information, summarise and make predictions about what is about to happen next. All while hearing a variety of texts.
To read more about our approach to teaching reading, please look at our reading intent statement below.
With the increased focus on grammar, punctuation and spelling, some key terms are now being used in school that, as adults, we may be unfamiliar with. Please see a glossary of terms for the English programmes of study within the National Curriculum below.
Phonics
At Trinity, we have started teaching the principles of synthetic phonics by following Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised as our approach. Children begin their phonics journey when they start full time in Reception and continue to the end of Year 1.
Further information can be found within the document, which outlines the teaching overview within Reception and Year 1 and the connection to early reading. It contains useful videos of how to pronounce phonemes and how we teach blending and tricky words within our daily lessons.
Phonics and Early Reading at Trinity
