English

 

 

English at Winsford High Street!

At High Street, the development of literacy skills is crucial to all areas of the curriculum. We believe good literacy skills provide our children with the building blocks not just for academic success, but for fulfilling careers and rewarding lives.

 

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Writing

We follow a Mastery approach to English through the programme ‘Pathways to Write.’ Units of work are delivered using high quality texts and children in all year groups are given varied opportunities for writing. Skills are built up through repetition within the units, and children apply these skills in the writing activities provided.  Many opportunities for widening children’s vocabulary are given through the Pathways to Write approach and this builds on the extensive work we do in school to provide our children with a rich and varied vocabulary.  

 

Reading

At High Street, we believe that all children should have a love of reading. High quality texts stir the senses, inspire imagination and spark a love of reading that will last a lifetime. Reading has a high profile at High Street, we aim for all children to become competent and fluent readers who develop interest and enjoyment in reading and can access information from a wide variety of texts.  All children are provided with a reading book and an on-line reading record. We actively encourage daily reading at school and at home.Each class has a reading corner stocked with fiction and non-fiction texts. Children in the EYFS and Key Stage 1 are encouraged to take 'Reading for Pleasure' books to share  with their families. 

 

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Children are taught to read through well planned whole-class shared reading sessions (Y1 - Y6), 1:1 reading is proritised in the EYFS  and Year 1 and children participate in weekly guided reading sessions (Y2 - Y6).

Stories are shared daily in EYFS and Key Stage 1.

 

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We follow a Mastery approach to English through the programme Pathways to Read. Units of work are delivered using high quality texts and children in all year groups are given varied opportunities for reading. Skills are built up through repetition within the units, and children apply these skills in the reading activities provided.  

We deliver three whole class shared reading lesson per week from years 2-6 with bespoke guided reading for every pupil at least once a week as well as individual reading. For pupils still needing support with phonics from years 2-6, we provide an individual reading programme that has phonically decodable texts at the heart of it. In our shared and grouped reads, there is a clear teaching focus with the opportunity to master key reading skills in each session. There are follow on reading tasks to enable pupils to evidence the skills they have mastered independently.

Many opportunities for widening children’s vocabulary are given through the Pathways to Read approach and this builds on the extensive work we do in school to provide our children with a rich and varied vocabulary.  

We also use Pathways to Write to drive our writing curriculum. This aligns with Pathways to Read ensuring meaningful links for our pupils with texts and topics that are used across Literacy, Humanities and Science.

 

Spelling

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We follow a mastery approach to the teaching of spelling through the programme ‘Pathways to Spell’. It is a programme designed to deliver the statutory content of the Primary National Curriculum for spelling in key stages 1 and 2. Through weekly teaching of spelling objectives and development of a whole school approach to word transcription, vocabulary development and proof-reading, the programme aims to develop children as proficient spellers.

 

Speaking and Listening

At Winsford High Street, we stress the importance of Speaking and Listening in all subjects as well as Drama. We know that speaking and listening are at the heart of language, not only as foundations for reading and writing, but also as essential skills for thinking and communication. We understand for our pupils to express themselves fluently, they must be exposed to and taught a breath of vocabulary. We expose our pupils to a rich language environment with opportunities to hear and confidently experiment with new words.

Throughout the year, our children will have 'No Pens Days'. These are to promote the use of Speaking and Listening as they give our children a chance to focus solely on those without the writing part. Below is a little snapshot at what our No Pens Day looked like across the school.

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At Winsford High Street, we strive to achieve proficiency in spelling, grammar and punctuation. We promote the learning of spellings, including statutory words, common exception words and the national spelling rules through the Pathways to Spell scheme. We believe that the teaching of spelling, grammar and punctuation enables children to express themselves creatively within their writing. This is why we explicitly teach these skills throughout our literacy learning and the wider curriculum.

 

Handwriting

At Winsford High Street, we are proud of the handwriting standards throughout our school. Our children achieve a neat, legible style with correctly formed letters in accordance with the upright, rounded cursive font. We teach discrete handwriting lessons frequently throughout to allow children to develop flow and speed in their writing that is seen in their independent writing.

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Online Learning Resources for Home

At Winsford High Street, we provide our pupils in Y1-Y6 with a tablet to use in school. Apps that our educators think will be benificial for your children's learning are uploaded to this tablet. Additional to this, here are some websites you can use at home to help your child's learning.

Learning Area Website Information
Writing/SpaG Home - BBC Bitesize Games, tasks, homework help and videos.
Writing/SpaG Our New EducationCity - Personalised & Distance Learning | EducationCity Games, interactive lessons and videos. Individual logins provided by school.
Spelling Spelling games, tests and activities (spellzone.com) Spelling games.
Reading Reading Plus® Login Y2-Y6 interactive reading comprehensions. Individual logins provided by school.
Reading  Collins Ebooks (collinsopenpage.com) Reading books for children on colour book band. Individual logins provided by school.
All Log In | Microsoft Teams Home learning and homework uplaoaded to teams. Children can upload their work to assignments. Individual logins provided by school.

 

Pupil Voice 

“I like writing and making my family proud, I write my letters in my book.”

“You need a capital letter and a finger space. I like writing in my English book everyday.”

“It is good in English because I like writing and it is fun. We are learning about conjunctions this week. I have been practising writing, when I first started my letters were a bit bumpy but now, I am getting better!”

" In English, you can write your own version of a story, write your own stories and read books, I really like the books we read at school.”

“I enjoyed writing a report. I knew a lot of facts. I had to write who the most significant person was. The title explains what we are doing each day. It was History and English together. I have improved my handwriting and I write more now.”

"I really like reading because it boosts my imagination which means I can come up with lots of interesting stuff."

"I love reading!"

"Non-fiction is my favourite, I can learn new and interesting facts!"

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