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|Reading is a crucial part of our curriculum at Avenue Primary School. By the end of Year Six we intend our children to have developed a love of reading. We aim to provide children with a literacy-rich environment, high quality texts and inspiring learning opportunities, which will help to read accurately, fluently and with understanding; apply a knowledge of structured synthetic phonics in order to decode unfamiliar words with increasing accuracy and speed; be able to read with expression, clarity and confidence.
We will help to develop a good linguistic knowledge of vocabulary and grammar by reading and responding to a wide range of different types of texts so that when they leave Avenue Primary School, they will read fluently, and with confidence, in any subject in their forthcoming secondary education.
|Through the delivery of our reading curriculum we ensure a consistent and robust teaching and learning of early reading and phonics, so that pupils are able to read with increased speed and fluency and access the wider curriculum. We follow the RWI scheme. Children are provided with books that match and support their phonics development and ability.
All pupils have opportunities to develop their reading skills daily, and are encouraged to read at home with an adult. We provide a text rich environment, in order to encourage a positive culture of reading throughout all classes and promote pupils’ enjoyment of reading. Through high quality teaching and learning experiences we will develop children’s skills and competence. Through the use of high quality texts pupils are encouraged to develop their vocabulary, and develop comprehension skills and enjoyment of books. Reading skills are continually developed through the wider curriculum.
Reading for pleasure is promoted through the use of reading out loud to the class every day. Teachers, parents and children have the opportunity to recommend books to each other, focus on a key range of authors and have opportunities to express ideas about books they have read.
|Pupils will make at least good progress from their starting points. They will be equipped with a strong command of the written word and acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for writing.
Pupils will write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.
We have a clear journey of reading across the school from Nursery to Year 6.
Please watch the video below and then click the link to look through our Guide for parents about ‘Reading with your Child.’
Phonics help: top 10 tips
Get top tips for developing phonics skills at home, advice on decoding and blending words, and how to make the phonics sounds correctly from phonics expert and creator of the Read Write Inc. Phonics programme Ruth Miskin. Find more phonics help on Oxford Owl.
Struggling to find books to read with your child at home? Click on the links below to websites that have a range of free e-books, which you can read online.
‘FunBrain’ – Free E-Books Popular kids books to read online for free!
Oxford Owl Library – Our free eBooks collection, developed for children aged 3–11 years old. Help your young child learn to read, and love to read, with our range of over 150 eBooks.
Magickeys – A range of free storybooks
Fizzy Funny Fuzzy – The home of funny poetry by the Fizzy Funny Fuzzy
BBC Newsround – Daily news and reports from around the world written specifically for children
Story Jumper – StoryJumper is a site that gives teachers, students, parents, and authors a way to share books they have written and read lots of others. Our goal is to inspire anyone that’s ever wanted to write an illustrated story to get started!
Free Children’s Stories – A range of free and original stories for kids
Storyline Online – Stories read aloud for children
Magic Blox – Read Kid’s Books Online
Free Kids Books – Free Kids Books is a growing library of unique children’s books and literary resources available online and for download in a user friendly pdf format.
Kids World Fun – Looking eBooks for your kids? We have the best collection of free animated eBooks will undoubtedly stimulate your child’s mind, studies and learning pattern. Find these very interesting carefully made free eBooks for kids.
|It is our intent to provide high quality learning experiences in order to develop pupils’ competence in both transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech and writing). Pupils will learn how to plan, revise, evaluate and edit their writing effectively.
They will be able to write down their ideas fluently, spelling words quickly and accurately by knowing the relationship between sounds and letters in words. The development of pupils’ composition skills will ensure they can form, articulate and communicate ideas, organise them coherently for a reader, showing an awareness of the audience, purpose and context, and an increasingly wide knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. We aim to encourage pupils to develop fluent, legible and, eventually, speedy handwriting.
|Writing is taught in specific meaningful and effective contexts. We underpin our writing lessons through the use of high quality texts. Children have effective, high quality writing lessons in addition to frequent opportunities to write across the curriculum. Speaking and listening skills are planned to support children in articulating their ideas.
Children have opportunities to reflect on and improve writing through editing as well as self, peer and teacher conferencing to provide clear next steps for learning. Spelling skills are developed using a phonics based approach and in line with the requirements of the English National Curriculum 2014. Children are taught to use a neat and consistent style of handwriting, and presentation.
Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar is taught in accordance with the statutory requirements of the English National Curriculum.
|All pupils will be able to read with accuracy, speed, confidence, fluency and understanding, ready to access the secondary school curriculum.
All pupils will make good and outstanding progress from their starting points. Pupils will develop a life-long enjoyment of reading and books.
Writing at Avenue is linked to the Learning Challenge Curriculum where possible to engage and enrich the children’s learning experience. It is modelled by the teacher as the expert writer, with contributions from the children. Writing opportunities are planned every week to allow children to develop and consolidate skills learnt in writing lessons.
We try to allow children to write in context so they feel they are writing for a purpose (e.g. Persuading the Head Teacher not to cancel P.E. or writing a description about their bedroom), but we also give them opportunities to write in character or about the wider world (e.g. An explanation text about the Phases of the Moon).
Feel free to look at the curriculum overviews in our curriculum section of the website, or speak to the class teacher, to find out more about what your child will be writing about this term.
From the earliest stages, children will be developing their fine motor skills when they pick up writing tools and make marks on paper. You can help by giving your child lots of opportunities to scribble, draw, colour and develop other early writing skills. However, handwriting needs to be taught in a consistent way and it is important for children to develop good habits with writing.
At Avenue we follow the Nelson Handwriting scheme. Click on the link to watch video to find out more about the scheme and how to support your child.
To support your children at home:
- Give them lots of opportunities to write for different purposes
- Ensure they are using the correct pencil grip
- Ensure they are sitting in the correct position
- Help them to form the letters correctly and at the correct size
What do we mean by ‘phonics’?
Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing of the English language by developing learners’ awareness of the sounds within a word (Phonemes). The aim is for children to gain an understanding of the correspondence between the sounds and the different spelling patterns linked with each sound.
Learning to read is the most important thing your child will learn at our school. Everything else depends on it, so we put as much energy as we possibly can into making sure that every single child learns to read as quickly as possible. Part of learning to read is having good knowledge of phonics.
At Avenue Primary School we use the Read Write Inc programme to teach phonics.
Understanding Phonics (Information for Parents)
This video on Understanding Phonics explains why learning to read and spell in English is more difficult than in other languages, and how Phonics can help.
How will my child be taught phonics?
We start by teaching phonics to the children in the Reception class. This means that they learn how to ‘read’ the sounds in words and how those sounds can be written down. This is essential for reading, but it also helps children learn to spell well. We teach the children simple ways of remembering these sounds and letters. Ask them to show you what these are.
The children also practise reading (and spelling) what we call ‘tricky words’, such as ‘once,’ ‘have,’ ‘said’ and ‘where’. They then practise their reading skills with words that match the sounds they have learnt and the ‘tricky words’ they know. They start thinking that they can read and this does wonders for their confidence.
What can I do to help? Is there anything that I shouldn’t do?
You will be invited to a meeting so that we can explain how we teach phonics. Please come and support your child. We would very much like you to know how to help.
Your child may bring different sounds home from school to learn. Help your child to sound out the letters in words and then to ‘push’ the sounds together to make a whole word. Try not to refer to the letters by their names. Help your child to focus on the sounds.
You can hear how to say the sounds correctly by clicking on this link.
Sometimes your child might bring home a picture book that they know well. Please don’t say, ‘This is too easy.’ Instead, encourage your child to tell you the story out loud; ask them questions about things that happen or what they think about some of the characters in the story.
We know parents and carers are very busy people. But if you can find time to read to your child as much as possible, it helps him or her to learn about books and stories. They also learn new words and what they mean. Show that you are interested in reading yourself and talk about reading as a family. You can find out about good stories to read to your child by clicking on this link.
Does it matter if my child misses a lesson or two?
It matters a lot if your child misses school. The way we teach children phonics is very well organised, so even one missed lesson means that your child has not learnt something that they need to know to be a good reader.
Please click on the link to view.
What is phonics?
How to say the sounds
National Literacy Trust
BBC Primary Bitesize
Children’s Storybooks online
World Book Day
Cross curricular writing
We love reading