At Our Lady Immaculate we aim to produce a lively and stimulating environment in which staff are committed to teaching individual, group and class activities which promote rich and appropriate speaking, listening, reading and writing experiences. We have recently adapted our writing curriculum to become a ‘Read to Write’ school which has created an inspiring curriculum; please read below to view our policies and curriculum overviews.
We recognise that English is a core subject within the National Curriculum and essential for educational and social progress. Mastery over language empowers children to communicate creatively and imaginatively, as well as allowing them engagement with the world at large. Therefore we aim to establish a curriculum which provides the necessary meaningful opportunities to develop competence in all language areas.
Reading and writing within our school curriculum has been implemented with our phonics scheme as a foundation, please visit our phonics page for more information.
You can view our English Twitter (X) feed by searching #olipenglish
Writing
Our writing scheme empowers teachers to provide high-quality teaching of writing through high-quality literature. These detailed units of work centre on engaging, vocabulary-rich vehicle texts, with a wealth of writing opportunities within and across the curriculum and they also signpost wider curriculum enrichment opportunities through writing.
The documents below give you more information about the vehicle texts and genres that your child will be covering.
Reception Progression & Overview
Year 2 Progrerssion & Overview
Year 3 Progrerssion & Overview
Year 4 Progrerssion & Overview
Year 5 Progrerssion & Overview
Year 6 Progrerssion & Overview
Reading
It is our aim to encourage children to learn to love reading and to read regularly outside of school. Each area within school has its own dedicated area for a library as well as access to disciplinary reading texts.
Children will be taught two key reading skills:
Through ‘word reading’ the ability to decode words- will be taught through the use of the synthetic phonics scheme ‘Little Wandle’. Children will be assessed to determine the level of books they should be reading and to ensure that they progress appropriately.
Through ‘language comprehension’ children’s comprehension skills will be taught through high quality shared and guided reading sessions with teachers and teaching assistants, individual and group reading times and whole class reading activities. We have moved towards a whole class reading approach and we have found that children have become motivated to read and discuss more challenging texts. Children explore a range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts and explore skills in recall, making inferences, developing vocabulary, making predictions and summarising texts.
We are very fortunate to employ a language support assistant to work with children for whom English is not their first language. Learning support assistants work with individual pupils and assess and lead learning to ensure these children receive high quality interventions.
Celebrations such as World Book Day are used to invite authors into school and promote the pleasure and knowledge that can be gained from books. We also take advantage of our local authority’s events that have included workshops and visits from authors.
Useful websites for Parents
Please find a list of websites that you may find useful in helping you and your child learn about phonics. Games and fun activity websites are also included.
http://jollylearning.co.uk/ – Games and information for parents
http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/ – many games to play
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks1/literacy/phonics/play/ – fun games for the children to play
http://www.ictgames.com/literacy.html – fun games for the children to play
http://www.kenttrustweb.org.uk/kentict/kentict_home.cfm – fun games for the children to play and information for parents
http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/ – fun games for the children to play
http://www.starfall.com/ – fun games for the children to play
http://www.firstschoolyears.com/ – fun games for the children to play
BBC Bitesize – many games to play covering all areas of the curriculum