We believe that children at Offley Endowed Primary school should develop a life-long love of literacy. We promote the correct use of the spoken word within school and the staff model the use of vocabulary at an age appropriate level for our children. Children are exposed to a range of reading materials throughout their time at Offley Endowed School, and we share, and are excited by the written word.
Children develop their speaking and listening skills both in their Year groups and in whole school activities such as: Collective Worship, church services, school performances and work we do outside in our local community.
Children are taught English as a discrete subject every day. In Reception this will be approximately 20 minutes of an adult directed activity moving to around 45 minutes in year 2 and 60 minute lessons across years 3 – 6. Most lessons include a mixture of speaking and listening, reading and writing.
Children in Reception receive discrete phonics teaching daily and are quickly encouraged to share books with their teachers and other classmates. Children in KS1 have daily phonic and spelling lessons, as well as being introduced to grammar teaching. We use Little Wandle as the basis of our phonics teaching and learning. In KS2 children are taught in units of work which include spelling and grammar sessions. During this lesson time the children may work independently, in pairs or as a group. They may present their work on whiteboards, in their books or even on large sheets of sugar paper. We often photograph these pieces and collate them in the children’s books for future use. Children are heard read on a regular basis, either individually, or as part of a guided group reading session.
Learning is grouped into units, e.g. recounts, traditional tales etc... From year 2 the children stick targets into their books for each unit and jointly review their progress with their teachers. Units are based around a text type and children are exposed to the text type in a variety of ways across the curriculum. They develop the ability to read a text, identify key elements of a text type e.g. use of language and suitable sentence structures and then create a written piece based on the text type.
All classes have a set of non-negotiable targets that the children work to, and these are used across all curriculum areas.
We do not follow one scheme of work, instead we draw from a range of resources available in school and on line.