English
"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body" - Joseph Addison
"Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on" - Louis L'Amour
English at Warfield
At Warfield, we aim to equip children with the essential language skills to speak, read and write confidently with enjoyment, helping them build valuable life skills and cultural awareness. We build on the language children bring from home by offering rich and varied linguistic experiences. English is a key skill that underpins learning across all subjects, enabling pupils to access the full curriculum and express themselves effectively in any context. Our goal is for all pupils to become fluent readers, articulate speakers, active listeners and confident writers. They will develop strong vocabulary, grammar, comprehension skills, learn to express opinions, emotions and responses to a range of texts. Pupils will write clearly and effectively, adapting style to suit different purposes and audiences and will plan, draft and edit to improve their work. Further to this, at Warfield, we foster a love of literature, encourage discussion as a tool for learning and integrate high-quality literacy experiences across the curriculum.
How we deliver our curriculum:
Reading
Being able to read is the most important skill children will learn during their early schooling. It is our vision that through our purposeful approach to teaching Early Reading & Phonics, every child will be able to read confidently, fluently and accurately with understanding and enjoyment by the end of their primary schooling; all central to developing understanding across our broad and balanced curriculum. At Warfield, we use Essential Letters and Sounds. This enables children at Warfield to deploy a full range of reading cues - phonic, graphic, syntactic, contextual, and to monitor, correct and make sense of their own reading as they deepen their skill sets. By doing so, children grow and move from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn’ for purpose and pleasure enabling children to access evermore challenging texts into and throughout KS2. We foster enthusiasm in words and their meanings for comprehension and to gain an appreciation and love of books from a variety of genres and media (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, reading scheme books, ‘real’ books, e-books etc).
Phonics
Warfield uses Essential Letters and Sounds, a synthetic phonics programme, backed by Oxford University Press. It teaches children how sounds are presented by written letters. Children are taught to read words by blending these sounds together to make words. For example, they will be taught that the letters ‘m-a-t’ blend together to make ‘mat’. A synthetic phonics programme, such as ELS, is a structure for teaching these sounds in a certain order to build up children’s learning gradually. It is used daily during Reception and Year 1 to teach all the sounds in the English language.
How is ELS taught?
With ELS, there is a daily phonics lesson where the teacher teaches a new sound, or reviews sounds learned earlier in the week. This is shown to the class on the whiteboard.
Children learn the letters that represent the sounds. They are then asked to read words and sentences with the new sounds in. Children will also practise writing the letters that represent the sounds.
What order are the sounds taught in?
New sounds are taught each day, with some review days and weeks to help children practise what they’ve learned.
Click below to reveal the sounds your child will learn in ELS:
How should the sounds be pronounced?
Children learn to read letters or groups of letters by saying the sounds they represent. Pronounce the sounds as you would say them within a word. Make sure you don’t add ‘uh’ onto the end, so for ‘m’ say ‘mm’ not ‘muh’ and for ‘l’ say ‘ull’ not ‘luh’.
Click below to show you how to pronounce the sounds:
How can I help at home?
We want children to create a strong orthographic map. This means that they learn sounds spelt by the letters or groups of letters in each word. This is especially important when ‘alternatives’ in the English language appear.
To read fluently, or well, we need a strong orthographic map.
To consistently recognise that the ea in bread spells /e/ we need to read it at least 4 times. This means we need to read the word many times to build fluency for reading. This is why we advocate for not changing a book straight away.
Practising the Sounds:
- You can help your child practise the sounds they have been learning at school. Download the charts linked above (under What order are the sounds taught in?) so you can see the list of sounds in the order they’ll be taught. You can show these to your child along with the picture/mnemonic to help them remember.
Blending:
- After children learn to read some sounds separately, they can start blending them together to form simple words. Take a look at the video below for ideas on how you can practise word blending with your child. How to Blend Sounds to Read Words
Reading Books:
- Decodable Oxford Owl e-Books will be issued which you can access from any device. These are specifically aligned to the teaching sequence of sounds your child is learning in school. You will be provided with a log in card to access these. These should be read 4 times during the week.
- In addition, your child will be issued with a shared reader which must be read together and will be changed every week.
Writing
Through our writing curriculum, it is our vision that every child will become a creative writer by being given exciting, inspiring and engaging materials and opportunities that challenge and support them. We want children to become confident, talented, enthusiastic writers who develop a love for writing. They will be able to use writing to communicate with others and express themselves and be able to write independently for a range of purposes. Children will be able to reflect upon and evaluate their writing, use vocabulary to create style and convey meaning and use what they read to enhance what they write. As they progress, children will deepen their knowledge of meaning and purpose within their writing. At Warfield, we have designed a curriculum that incorporates a variety of techniques to support children in their writing development, with a focus on Talk for Writing. Teachers plan and teach based on the needs and interests of their class and adapt lessons in order to support and challenge learning. We regularly assess independent pieces of writing across classes and year groups to identify gaps, inform planning and monitor progress.
Curriculum Documents
English Curriculum Overview English Narrative Skills Progression
English Non-fiction Skills Progression
English Poetry Skills Progression
Useful Links
Sound Mats Further ELS Info for Parents Parents e-Book Guide Oxford Owl eBook Library
Warfield ELS Phonics Parent Presentation English Newsletters KS1 Reading VIPERSKS2 Reading VIPERSRec - Y6 Reading Spine Recommendations
