St Michael's Primary School, Withyham

We subscribe to the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education to ensure we always use high quality texts to inspire writing.  The English subject overviews are below.  They cover reading, writing and grammar.  We have a two year cycle that each class follows from Year 1-5.  

 At St Michael's  we aim to enable all its learners to develop confident word reading and comprehension. We want our readers  to read easily, fluently and with good understanding. To develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information and acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language.

In order to do this we teach the National Curriculum Programme of study which consists of two dimensions

• Word reading, including phonics for the early teaching of reading
• Comprehension skills (both listening and reading)

We use the Little Wandle Phonics scheme in Reception and Year 1 and 2.  We have bought in Little Wandle Catch Up materials for children aged 7+.  Reading is the gateway to life long learning so we aim to ensure all children leave St Michael's as confident and fluent readers. Children are assessed regularly so gaps in knowledge are identified and closed.

In Years 3-6 learners participate in whole class reading. This takes place three times a week.  Teaching is based around high quality texts  and we have a folder of texts and excerpts to develop vocaularly and inference skills

As well as this work taking place three times a week learners  have a class novel in each class that is read regularly.