With regards to English, in KS1 and KS2, children are taught English on a daily basis, through our own designed programme based on the aspects of the Curriculum. English skills are taught and revisited many times in order that these key skills are embedded into the children’s long term memory and then used in a wide variety of contexts across the whole curriculum. Throughout the two weekly English cycle, children are: 

 

• Reading Detectives: During these sessions, children are introduced to the text, they ‘unpick’ the text, look at vocabulary using ‘Word Aware’ – Anchor, Step-on and Goldilocks words and focus on different Reading domains, developing and extending comprehension skills.

• Spagologists: These sessions focus on children developing their Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar skills.

• Sentence Stylers: The focus of these lessons are based upon sentence types. Children have the opportunity to build a varied and rich vocabulary and increase their knowledge of a range of sentence structures.

• Literal Masterminds: These sessions are where children plan and prepare for their ‘Big Write’ activity. This builds upon the skills that they have been introduced to throughout the week.

• Authors: During this session, children are asked to produce a final product which links to the theme. This can be written, presented, videoed, performed, etc.

• Editors and Publishers: The children are then given an opportunity to edit their work to make improvements either through self-editing or peer editing. The children are encouraged to publish their work where applicable in order to give their writing a purpose.

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The teaching of spelling is incorporated into Year 1 English Lessons through spelling starters and Years 2 – 6 follow the daily Read Write Inc. Spelling Programme with a dedicated 15 minute slot.

 

Phonics or Stop! Reading Time

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For Synthetics Phonics, we follow the Ruth Miskin Literacy programme. This is predominantly taught in Nursery, Reception and Year 1, with some Year 2 and a small minority of Year 3 still being on the programme. This is taught daily for 30 minutes from the beginning of Reception following 'The Strong Start guidance' with a focus on decoding and comprehension skills. As the year progresses, children in Reception move to 45 minutes and this continues on into Year 1 and Year 2. Children who start late to the school (therefore they may have missed our phonic programme) have tutoring to support their learning throughout the school.

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Once the children have exited Read Write Inc. groups, the children then move into Stop! Reading time. This is an opportunity for children to develop a passion for reading, participate in wider reading and develop their comprehension skills, focusing on the different Reading Domains. This is achieved through a two weekly programme: within this two week structure, echo and choral reading will be used to support reading, teacher led tasks, independent reading tasks and reading for pleasure opportunities. This is facilitated through the use of a comprehension box, a teacher led task and independent reading using the wide variety of reading areas across the school. At St Luke’s we value the importance of storytelling and sharing short stories, poetry and classic novels with the children and we have incorporated this into whole class story time. 

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The school libraries are used by all children across the school with Nursery and Reception children using it weekly and Year 1- Year 6 visiting once each half term as a class and more frequently during Reading after school clubs. All classrooms have a designated reading area where books are promoted weekly and children are able to borrow books whenever they like from the class libraries. 

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Handwriting 

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At St Luke's, we follow the Kinetic Letters handwriting programme. Skills are introduced in Early years and follow four key strands: Making bodies stronger, learning the letters, holding the pencil and flow and fluency through joining. Kinetic Letters is taught within a dedicated fifteen minute session every day. Kinetic Letter formation is also taught within phonic sessions.