English

English

Our English sessions include reading, writing, spelling and/or phonics and handwriting. These skills are taught during our daily English session, which is 1 hour and 15 minutes long in KS2 and is broken up into 1 hour phonics (RWI) and a 45-minute English lesson in KS1. They will also be taught or revisited during other areas of the curriculum and sessions on the timetable.

A wide range of genres are covered, including fiction and non-fiction. Teachers aim for children to complete one piece of fiction or non-fiction extended writing roughly every three weeks, following our Talk for Writing programme (imitate, innovate and invent). The definition of extended writing will vary depending on the ability and age of the children, but it always provides children with an opportunity to embed any skills taught previously. Each piece of extended writing is then assessed against each year group’s writing targets and used to inform future planning.

At Mesty Croft, children value reading for pleasure. Pupils spend time listening to their teacher reading a daily high-quality text and have the opportunity to go to the library and take a book, alongside their reading book, which is purely to read for pleasure. Reading is highly celebrated in school across the year, and special events such as ‘World Book Day’ and the Scholastic Book Fair ignite the passion for Reading for Pleasure within the children.