English
Talk 4 Writing:
School) as confident, fluent and able readers. We also have e-books matched to sounds for our early readers in Years Nursery to Year 3. All children practice their developing reading skills through daily phonics lessons (Infants), Talk 4 Writing, regular guided reading and individual reading scheme books (fully book banded beyond phonics). Each classroom has a dedicated reading area to encourage access to quality reading material and to promote a whole-school approach to the 'love of reading'. We have an extensive school library, which has recently been r e-fitted and re-stocked, used by confident readers in Key Stages 1 and 2. The process for borrowing books from the library, using an electronic record system, has been updated so that children and parents can browse the library stock, reserve books and review them all from home. We also have a committed group of reading volunteers who provide additional reading opportunities for some of our children. These volunteers are fully DBS checked and receive training on how to support children with their reading. If you would like to volunteer regularly in school, please talk to our team! We also have a dedicated Reading Shed in KS1 and a re-fitted reading bus in KS2.
At Abbey we use 'Talk for Writing' as our approach to teaching writing. Developed by Pie Corbett, this highly effective approach is based on the principles of how children learn to write. If a child cannot compose a piece of writing orally before they begin to write, then they will have a difficulty writing independently. So, the first stage of teaching children how to write is to ask children to imitate the key language they need for a particular topic orally before they try reading and analysing it. Over a three or four-week unit of 'Talk 4 Writing' the children participate in a range of activities that help them rehearse the tune of the language they need , followed by shared writing to show them how to craft their writing . Children are then supported to compose their own pieces. Children are given the opportunity to extend their writing and apply their knowledge and skills to cross curricular writing tasks. The 'Talk 4 Writing' approach is combined with 'Alan Peat's Sentence Types' and other grammar type activities to ensure that children are taught essential skills of grammar and punctuation. At Abbey we have created an agreed teaching schedule of these 'sentence types' which meet the needs of the English National Curriculum. Phonics We effectively use a s ynthetic and systematic approach to teaching Early Years and Key Stage One children phonics . We use the Department for Education's 'Letters and Sounds' schema (for the programme and progress), alongside 'Phonics Play' resources, to assist staff with teaching and learning and planning. This results in our young children quickly becoming confident readers. Children at our Nursery (FS1) learn Phase One of 'Letters and Sounds', identifying environmental and musical sounds, and learning how to identify individual sounds in words. For Reception (FS2), they are taught phases two to four, learning letter sounds, 'tricky words' and diagraphs/ trigraphs. More able pupils progress to phase five. At Year One, some children repeat phase four and most start phase five, learning spelling patterns, 'tricky words' and high frequency words. Year Two children are taught phase six, practising and applying their phonic knowledge. In 2024-25, children will have extra teaching in phonics to ensure they have completed the teaching in their phase.
Reading Scheme
Our reading scheme is fully matched to the sounds that children learn in their phonics lessons. Once they have secured all the sounds and become proficient readers, they use book banded books (matched to their reading age) throughout the school, which supports our approach to teaching reading. In our Early Years phase, we use a range of books across different series to help children decode words and read 'tricky words' taught in their phonics level. This is supplemented by books from other publishers to give a varied range of reading material. Our aim is that by the end of Key Stage 1 (Infant School), children are ready for Key Stage 2 (Junior
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