English
Writing
“If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.” – Peter Handke
At All Saints Upton, we strive to inspire the children to become confident, independent readers and writers who are able to communicate their ideas and opinions in written form with ease and accuracy. We know that writing is a crucial life skill that opens many doors for us later in life and we aim to equip children with strong writing skills that can be transferred across the curriculum and beyond. Our writing sessions are based upon high quality texts and inspirational themes that seek to motivate and engage children in their learning. – giving them a desire to write and to write with enthusiasm!
Reading
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” - Dr Seuss.
We believe that reading is the skill that opens the door to confident writing and to the rest of the curriculum – to a world of knowledge. It gives children the confidence and ability to access information independently from a wide range of sources. It is our responsibility to lay down firm foundations in the crucial area of English, equipping children with skills in reading, writing and phonics, which will allow them to access all areas of the curriculum with success. Across the whole school, we have introduced reading for pleasure into our timetable. At the end of the day, each class teacher will share an exciting book with the children.
For 2023 we are becoming a Schoolreaders host school. Schoolreaders recruits, places and supports volunteers to in local primary schools to give children one-to-one reading support on a weekly basis. We’re proud to be a partner school, able to provide our pupils with this valuable extra time each week!
Reading and Writing
Throughout the school, we use Literacy Tree for our teaching of English. Literacy Tree is used across the UK and globally and is an award-winning educational platform. All of the Literacy Tree resources use high-quality children’s books and for Writing, we follow their Teach Through a Text approach to ensure there is consistency throughout the school.
It also supports to create high levels of engagement as it immerses children in the text whilst covering the objectives fully in the curriculum. The text choices are an important part of this as well - many link to aspects of History and/or encourage deep discussions. We pride ourselves on our diverse choices.
There are a wide range of websites which can be used to practice English skills at home. Some examples of these websites are:
- Spelling Punctuation and Grammar (7 – 11 year olds) – http://www.topmarks.co.uk/english-games/7-11-years/spelling-and-grammar
- KS1 BBC Bitesize – http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks1/literacy/
- KS2 BBC Bitesize – http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks2/english/
