At St Joseph’s, reading and writing are at the heart of all learning across the curriculum. All classes use key texts to provide a rich stimulus in English lessons and enhance learning across the whole curriculum. This key text is also supported by linked non-fiction texts, poems and rhymes. The children study a range of authors and poets to provide them with a deep and varied appreciation of literature.

To learn further about our approach to reading and writing, please click the links below.

 

English LTP St Joseph’s Approach to Reading St Joseph’s Approach to Writing St Joseph’s Authors Studied Across School St Joseph’s Poets Studied Across School

 

 

Tracking Progress in English (Reading, Writing and Communication)

 

We use Target Tracker to record the progress of each child in English. Teachers use a range of ongoing teacher assessment and summative assessments to gather evidence. Please see the band posters for each year group below.

Reading and Spoken Language

Year 1 Year 2Year 3Year 4 Year 5 Year 6

 

Writing

Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6

 

What does explicit teaching of Phonics look like?

To teach phonics at St Joseph’s, we use the Sounds-Write programme. This programme is highly structured, engaging and well paced to help our pupils make maximum progress in learning to read, write and spell. Phonics is explicitly taught daily from FS1 to Year 2. Smaller group teaching of phonics continues in Key Stage 2 as necessary and all teachers draw on the pedagogical approaches of Sounds-Write to ensure consistency in teaching reading and writing skills.

For more information about our phonic programme, please visit the Sounds Write website by clicking the button below.

Click here to access the Sounds Write Website

At St Joseph’s, we recognise the important role families have in supporting their child’s phonics journey. Show and Share sessions in school provide the opportunity for parents and carers to see the programme in action and to support their children with their phonics learning.

We regularly hold phonics information evenings to provide our families from FS1 – Year 6 with a good understanding of how they can support their child’s reading at home. All parents across the school are invited to attend to explore the programme and have an opportunity to ask questions.

Phonics Evening Presentation

 

Our Reading Scheme

At St Joseph’s, we have curated a whole-school reading scheme made up of Dandelion, Sounds Write and Oxford Reading Tree texts,  to ensure children access a range of fiction and non-fiction books throughout their reading journey. In Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1, books are carefully matched to phonic sounds. Children take home 2 books a fortnight as well as being offered additional reading materials, such as tracking and phonics activities or books chosen from the class reading corner. In Key Stage 2, pupils have 1 fiction and 1 non-fiction book which is carefully monitored to ensure all children read a diverse range of texts and develop their fluency and comprehension skills.

We appreciate the important role families play in supporting reading at home. To help our families understand the comprehension skills which we develop at St Joseph’s, we host Reading Evenings for parents to attend. Many parents attend and the feedback is that they feel that they have much more of an understanding of the assessment focuses that help us to help the children develop their comprehension skills.

Reading Evening Presentation

How is reading embedded throughout school?

All classes have a reading area, access to the school library (library club and within curriculum time), author spotlights, paired reading sessions, regular access to reading competitions and we enjoy to celebration reading as a whole school as well as the expectation that children apply their reading skills across the curriculum. All staff aim to motivate, inspire and challenge children to become lifelong readers as we believe reading is an essential life skill. Please see our ‘Love of Reading’ page for more information – click the button below.

Click here to see our Love of Reading page

Each class has a Recommended Reads area or display and children are encouraged to recommend their favourite books to others. All staff across school drive this and promote a love of reading! Our younger classes also have ‘Author Spotlight’ areas to promote our key authors and poets!

 

What does explicit teaching of reading look like?

At St Joseph’s, we use a variety of reading lesson activities to engage and inspire our pupils. Look through the gallery below to see just a snap shot of whole-class reading lessons!

Guided Reading

From Foundation Stage to Year 6, Guided Reading is explicitly taught to develop reading skills. This may take place in an intervention, small groups or whole class to best suit the needs of the class. Teachers use the reading scheme as well as texts linked to other areas of the curriculum to ensure reading skills are embedded.

Burn2Learn

We also like to ensure that our Reading lessons are active for the children. We use Burn2Learn activities to offer a variety of active English lessons to engage all learners!

 

What does explicit teaching of writing look like?

At St Joseph’s, we have created our own approach to teaching writing, called ‘Talk Write‘. All writing begins with an exciting stimulus to hook the children into the learning. We then immerse the children in the genre using specific text types and exploring examples of the genre. We explore vocabulary with Word Aware lessons and have lots of talk at every stage to practise specific skills. The children are exposed to high quality shared and modelled writing, specifically teaching them how to write. We value the planning stage and give the children plenty of time to write at length to show their creative flair. The children are also expected to edit and improve their writing. Embedded within our approach, and valued by all adults in our school, are role play, talk, Burn2Learn, visual stimuli and personalised target cards. In Foundation Stage, our children are exposed to exploring writing in many ways and the writing during challenge time encourages them to write for a purpose. They take their writing inside and outside. The children enjoy exploring forming letters in shaving foam, oats, sand, with chalk, on whiteboards and many more ways that provide them with feedback from the surface that they are writing on. Our FS1 and FS2 classrooms have themed role play areas, that encourage writing in various ways, for example writing a list if the role play area is a shop.

 

 

Reading Across the Curriculum

We make best use of the resources from the Leeds Library Service by using them in our learning across the curriculum. Years 2-6 complete ‘Reading Around the Subject’ challenges where they are tasked with using non-fiction texts to find out information, we particularly encourage our children to find facts even the teachers don’t know!

Reading Around the Subject

Reading activities are used across the curriculum, both for individual learning tasks and group work. Children are also given opportunities to read as writers, to help them learn from excellent examples. Please explore the gallery below to see just a few examples of how reading is embedded in our curriculum.

Spelling Shed

At Joseph’s, all our children from FS2 to Y6 have access to Spelling Shed. This can be accessed both in school and at home to support each child to work on their weekly spellings. We have found the platform engages every year group and allows teachers to personalise and differentiate spellings as necessary. Spelling Shed offers a variety of activities for pupils to learn their spellings which we enhance by also offering paper copies of spellings for children to practice writing in the traditional way.

Click to access Spelling Shed

Reading Eggs

To support the children with developing their reading skills, all children also have access to Reading Eggs. Teachers set weekly tasks as part of their English homework offering and we have found it to be a very popular platform with pupils and parents alike! To find out more about Reading Eggs, please click the button below to access their website.

Reading Eggs Website