Stanley Common

Live, enjoy, believe, aim high

At Stanley Common Church of England Primary School, we believe that literacy is a fundamental life skill. English develops children's abilities to listen, speak, read and write for a wide range of purposes. Children are enabled to express themselves creatively and imaginatively as they become enthusiastic and critical readers of stories, poetry and drama, as well as of non-fiction and media texts. An understanding of how language works can be gained through exploring its patterns, structures and origins. Using and applying skills in speaking, reading and writing across a range of subjects and situations supports proficiency. By widening their knowledge, understanding and appreciation of English in all its forms, we seek to help pupils see the importance of English as a subject in itself but also as a key to unlocking their enjoyment and success in other subjects, ultimately leading them towards becoming confident, competent and fluent speakers, listeners, readers and writers for life.

Aims and Objectives:

  • To enable children to speak clearly and audibly and to take account of their listeners.
  • To encourage children to listen with concentration, in order to identify the main points of what they have heard.
  • To show children how to adapt their speech to a wide range of circumstances and demands.
  • To teach children effective communication, both verbal and non-verbal, through a variety of drama activities, including the communication of their ideas, views and feelings.
  • To help them become confident, independent readers, through an appropriate focus on word, sentence and text-level knowledge.
  • To develop enthusiastic and reflective readers, through contact with challenging and substantial texts.
  • To foster the enjoyment of writing and a recognition of its value.
  • To encourage accurate and meaningful writing, be it narrative or non-fiction.
  • To improve the planning, drafting and editing of their written work, with emphasis on spelling, punctuation and grammar.

 Phonics

At Stanley Common Church of England Primary, all children in EYFS and Key Stage 1 have daily discrete phonics sessions. We use a combination of the 'Letters and Sounds' programme and other supporting resources for our planning and teaching, including books from 'Read Write Inc. Phonics'. The children are grouped and taught different phases according to their level. We work daily with the children to apply phonics skills in all areas of their reading and writing. If children in Key Stage 2 require further phonic teaching this is delivered through intervention work, either in small groups or 1:1.

 Reading

To support the teaching of reading at our school, Guided Reading occurs outside the daily English lesson at Key Stage 2 and within the English lesson at Key Stage 1. Group work is based on a rotation during the week within the class. Children are grouped according to ability and when not reading with an adult, the children are given activities based on books read within either the Read, Write Inc., Project X Origins or Ginn 360 reading schemes, focusing on comprehension activities, spelling, grammar, punctuation and language development.