English
English at Newfield Park
Philosophy/Rationale.
At Newfield Park Primary Academy, we believe that language and English is fundamental to the overall development of children and their access to the curriculum in all its aspects. We recognise that the acquisition of English, both spoken and written, will empower our pupils and provide the foundation for all their future learning.
Aims:
We promote a culture of reading, not simply as a life skill, but to also develop in pupils a love of books and literature that will not only support their learning across the curriculum, but also enrich their lives. We believe that the understanding and intelligent use of English is the cornerstone of a child’s education; we strive to engage pupils through an ever increasing amount of ‘reading for pleasure’ initiatives, working with parents to ensure children are reading high-quality texts on a daily basis. Our range of Reading for Pleasure initiatives can be found in the Reading sub-page lower down this page. As children move through the school, they will improve their comprehension ability through direct teaching of VIPERS which are linked to the KS1 and KS2 content domains. These are built into lessons weekly and increase in difficulty as children move through the school.
We provide children with a range of real-life purposes to write for, making use of visual literacy when possible via our unique 'Portal' and ensure that children experience a range of purposeful genres before they leave Primary Education.
We believe that all children should have regular opportunities for speaking and listening and our bespoke “Six Strands” help us to achieve this in a simple, child-friendly way which builds progressively from Early Years to Year 6. Children will have various ways of learning and utilising these crucial life-skills, from Class Assemblies to whole-school performances such as Newfield's Got Talent.
At Newfield, we believe that high quality, discreet systematic synthetic phonics lessons are essential to the development of early reading and spelling. We base our phonics lessons on the Little Wandle Phonics programme but have adapted it to suit our needs at Newfield. We assess the children’s phonic knowledge at least termly and this assessment is used to identify children who need a ‘catch up’ intervention. Home and guided reading books for Reception and Year One children will be phonic based texts, based upon the child’s phonic ability. Children will not access book banded books until Year Two. Children who have not passed the Phonics Screening Check in Year 2 will also take home phonics banded books to ensure they are continuing to improve on their phonics understanding.
Our early, rigorous work on Phonics blends into our work on Spelling which is underpinned by our use of an adapted version of the Rising Stars Spelling scheme. We believe all pupils should learn (and overlearn) spelling patterns as they progress through Primary Education, focusing on weekly spellings which are taught through lessons, games and fun quizzes. There is a specific focus on High-Frequency and Common Exception Words. For pupils who find spelling a challenge, various ‘Wave 1’ interventions are put into place throughout the year, with teachers working with the SENDCo to determine the best course of action. Additional ‘apps’ supplement our spelling approach e.g. Nessy, Spelling Shed
Statutory requirements for the teaching and learning of English are laid out in the National Curriculum in England: English Programmes of Study – Key Stages 1 and 2 and in the Communication and Language and Literacy sections of the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage. Our curriculum is drawn from these documents but is bespoke to Newfield Park Primary Academy.