English

Sholing Junior School encourages a love of reading, giving our pupils access to “the best that has been thought and said,” no matter what their background. This includes establishing a fluency of reading and the skills to decode new and adventurous words and the meaning behind them. Our text-based curriculum challenges and inspires, unlocking our children’s understanding of the world around them, opening the minds of our curious pupils and allowing them to explore new worlds. They experience cultures that may not be a common feature in their everyday lives and challenge their perceptions of human behaviour.

By exploring a range of classic and modern texts as well as films, we aspire to develop an enjoyment for writing, giving our children an in depth appreciation and understanding of the relationship between the author and the reader. Learning enables them to recognise how the vocabulary, structure and composition of a piece of writing impacts on the reader. This knowledge gives them the freedom to express themselves with a clear voice and allows their writing to speak to its audience beyond just being words on a page, making their reader laugh, cry, think,  imagine and hopefully, to be inspired themselves.

Spellings across the school will now be taught via Puple Mash. Each half term has a six week plan, with each week including either statutory words or a spelling rule relevant to the year group.

1. Log into your Purple Mash account and under subjects, select English.

2. Select SPAG.

3. Choose your year group.

4. Choose your term and week.

5. Select which learning exercises you wish to view.

Each set of spellings includes a PowerPoint (examples attached) explaining the spelling rule, a fun quiz, a 'Look, Cover, Write, Check' exercise and a copy of the spelling test which will be administered in class each Friday morning.

Children at Sholing Junior School follow the Kinetic Letters® scheme of handwriting. Kinetic Letters® is a handwriting programme developed by Margaret Williamson from her own teaching experience in primary schools.  The programme aims to get children to develop automaticity in handwriting  and achieve joining/cursive writing by the end of Year 3.  Automaticity is central to Kinetic Letters® because it makes handwriting a valuable tool, rather than a hindrance to learning, benefitting every curriculum area, self-esteem, and engagement with learning.

The programme has four main threads: Making bodies stronger, Holding the pencil, Learning the letters, and Flow and fluency. Together they enable children to develop legible handwriting that is produced quickly and automatically.

Kinetic Letters® teaches unjoined writing before joined/cursive writing (as recommended in current national guidance) in a way that pupils correctly forming unjoined letters in the manner prescribed by Kinetic Letters® should satisfy the joining element of the  expected standard” at KS2.

Kinetic Letters® is dyslexia friendly and has particular success in eliminating letter reversal.  In practice, Kinetic Letters® has proved as successful with boys as it has with girls, and the methodology works equally well with left-handers as with right-handers.

English at Sholing Juniors

Overall Aims.

• To teach children how to become effective communicators using both verbal and written skills.
• To develop confidence in communication skills and to teach the skills necessary to achieve clarity in speech and writing.
• To encourage pupils to listen, read a write with careful thought taken over the purpose, audience and composition.
• To provide a rich and varied experience of the English language, including the history behind its development and modern use.
• To give the opportunity to appreciate literacy in its many forms, and be inspired by it to learn the skills necessary to imitate and innovate it, whatever the genre.
• To develop enthusiastic and reflective readers through challenging and inspiring texts.
• To develop confident and accurate readers.
• To develop the enjoyment of writing and be given the opportunity to write creatively.
• To encourage children’s ability to be thoughtful and purposeful in the planning, drafting and editing of their work.
• To ensure progress for all children is rapid.

In Writing our aims are to:

• To create an enjoyment and stamina for writing.
• To be exposed to a range of quality texts, authors and genres of writing.
• To create thoughtful writers who are able to edit and improve their writing independently and accurately.
• For children to be able to write for a range of purposes with confidence.
• For children to recognise and use grammatical features accurately.
• For children to be able to recognise the links between reading and writing.

In Reading our aims are to:

• develop a knowledge and appreciation of reading;

• read with fluency, intonation and regard to the punctuation
• have a chance to share their enjoyment of the text through discussion;
• have children independently choosing more challenging texts to read.
• use appropriate strategies when reading new or less familiar words

• gain an appreciation of how authors use words and images to achieve different effects.
• to use appropriate reading strategies and reference skills to find specific information.