At St. Andrew’s, we pride ourselves on creating an environment that encourages and embraces a love of learning. We provide a stimulating environment, using a range of rich texts to teach all elements of English.
Using our ‘End Point’ documents, we ensure that the children are taught relevant subject content, supporting and challenging them where appropriate.
Speaking and Listening
Speaking and listening is taught throughout English lessons as part of the sequence of learning, using strategies such as debates, conscience alleys, oral story telling and hot seating. However, it is also embedded in many other areas of the curriculum, where children are encouraged to work collaboratively to discuss their understanding and learning, whilst practising new and rich vocabulary in grammatically correct and meaningful ways.
In addition, children are given opportunities to talk, give opinions and listen to a variety of viewpoints, including during our daily acts of worship, performances and our ‘Come and See’ days.
Reading
At St. Andrew’s, we believe that learning to read is one of the most important aspects of the children’s education. It opens doors and allows the children to enter new worlds. It also allows them to access and thrive in all subject areas so that they can benefit from a broad, balanced and ambitious curriculum.
The teaching of reading
Word reading and phonics:
The t
eaching of reading commences in The Early Years Foundation Stage through the use our Systematic Synthetic Phonics scheme, Little Wandle. This approach teaches children to associate a grapheme (written letter/s) with a particular phoneme (sound/s). These sounds can then be orally blended to produce a whole world.
For more information please visit:
For parents: Letters and Sounds
Comprehension
In Years 1-6, we follow a Mastery approach to comprehension
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.
A progression of skills is built up through each year group and is re-visited several times throughout the year. The children apply these skills in the imaginative and engaging reading activities provided and are then given clear follow on reading tasks to evidence the skills they have mastered independently.
Independent reading books
EYFS and Key Stage 1:
When appropriate for a child in EYFS, they will take home picture books without words so that they begin to understand characters and plots by talking about what they can see. This
helps to build vital inference skills and develop an early love of reading.
Once a child is secure with the first Phase 2 sounds, they will be provided with independent reading books, which closely match the taught graphemes. Children will continue to receive independent reading books closely matched to their phonic ability until they are secure in all of the Phase 5 sounds. This includes tricky words, taught as part of the phonics scheme.
Children are expected to read an independent book more than once at home, to build confidence and fluency in their expression.
Once a child has mastered Phase 5, they will move onto books containing words that are not necessarily decodable and follow spelling rules. They will also include more complex sentence structures and punctuation.
Key Stage 2:
KS2 class libraries contain books that are appropriate for each year group, giving a wide range of challenge. The chosen texts include a range of fiction and non-fiction with the children’s interests taken into consideration. Books have been organised into ‘genres’ to allow the pupils to easily locate those that interest them.
Reading for pleasure
At St. Andrew’s, we understand that the key to encouraging children to read more is to foster that love of reading early in their lives and to continue building on it as they move up the school.
In EYFS 
and Key Stage 1, every class has a ‘Bedtime Books’ bookcase outside their classroom. This offers parents and children the opportunity to choose a book for bedtime together and to keep for as long as the book is enjoyed. EYFS also have parent/carer ‘secret readers’, who come into class each week.
In KS2, the class libraries include a wide variety of texts, including picture books, magazines and graphic novels, that the children can take home to read. Books are also available for all ages to borrow during break and lunchtimes.
Throughout the school, children are encouraged to share the books they are reading with others and recommend ones that they are enjoying in order to create a ‘buzz’ around certain authors or texts. Teachers also model reading in class and share ‘favourites’ to inspire the children to read a wider range of genres.
The books corners in all classes are engaging and accessible and, where possible, books are displayed front facing. The organisation of the books also allows children to choose books they are likely to enjoy quickly and easily.
I
n addition to the above, we celebrate annual events such as World Book Day, hold competitions and host book fairs for the children to visit with their parents/carers. These are hugely popular and children are excited to share new books they have discovered.
Writing
We also follow a Mastery approach to writing through the programme ‘Pathways to Write.’ As with the reading, this approach is delivered using high quality texts and children in all year groups (from EYFS to Year 6) are given varied and creative opportunities for writing. The tasks are engaging and allow the children to embrace writing for purpose. The children benefit from, not only immersing themselves in a new text but also a clear progression of skills that are embedded through repetition in units and throughout the year. These include both grammatical skills and an increasing understanding of key features within each text type.
Spelling
In Early Years and Year 1, the teaching of spelling takes place through ‘Little Wandle’, alongside the teaching of phonics, which gives the children opportunities to practice new words through taught graphemes. It also addresses the tricky and high frequency words for each stage.
Years 2 to 6 use the ‘Pathways to Spell’ programme, which promotes the re-visiting and embedding of previous rules alongside the teaching of new year group specific ones. The children learn and practise through a range of well-thought out tasks, that allow the children to master new words in a fun yet purposeful way. ‘Pathways to Spell’ also details the statutory words for each year group and links them with the texts studied in English, where appropriate.
Please see our class pages for information on your child’s reading and spelling home learning.