Intent

Our Reading curriculum will instil a personal love of reading for all children. Children will become fluent and confident readers whilst engaging with a stimulating range of texts from a variety of genres in both fiction and non-fiction. Through this curriculum, children will develop and nurture the essential skills of word reading and comprehension.

Our Writing curriculum will allow children to develop and thrive with the transcription and composition elements of writing. Children will write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. Children will find writing engaging and enjoyable by writing based around a range of exciting stimuli and understand the importance of writing as a life-long skill.

At St Joseph's we use 'Talk for Writing' as our guide for planning English.  Please see link below for more details.

Implementation

St Joseph's Reading Spine

Here at St Joseph’s we use the “Talk for writing” strategy to develop our children as writers and foster a love of  reading through the use of high quality , relevant texts.

Children’s understanding of model texts is introduced in 3 stages:

Stage 1: imitation Stage

2: innovation

Stage 3: independent application

The imitation stage starts with the ‘Cold Task’ which allows the teacher to plan for the whole cycle. Teachers introduce the model text through active engagement and the hook. Children are learning the story by heart through actions supported with ‘story maps’. In this stage, children learn the text, look at the vocabulary and sentence structures and they discuss in depth the genre and features of the studied text. The class also creates a toolkit which supports the children to include all relevant components of the successful writing in the genre and of studied themes, e.g. description toolkit, suspense toolkit, character toolkit, etc.

The innovation stage is where the children are boxing up the modelled text and together, as a class, develop their shared text with alterations. Alterations vary from key stage to key stage, and can include: changing the scenery, characters, writing prequel or sequel or introducing flashbacks into the story. The teacher supports the children with writing through modelling high quality writing, grammar and vocabulary and provides ongoing feedback to all children with next steps.

In the last phase of the cycle, children apply all knowledge and skills learnt in the first two stages in order to develop their own stories. The teacher monitors what the children write and provides feedback where necessary, however this is an independent application also called the ‘Hot Task’ where children showcase what they have learnt through the whole cycle.

Early reading is taught through the Little Wandle Phonics programme in Years R and 1.  Children who struggle to learn to read continue with Little Wandle in Year 2.  If children still find reading difficult in KS2 then they use a combination of Little Wandle and Literacy Gold (formally known as Dyslexia Gold) interventions.  Whole class reading, group reading and individual reading continues to play an important part of reading development and joy throughout the school.