English

At Vernham Dean Primary we always ensure there is an exciting hook for writing so that it inspires imagination. Examples of hooks include: a wellie walk; cooking; animated stories without endings and enriched texts. All our units of work are meaningful and have clear purpose and audience. Each week, children are given the opportunity for free writing as Aspiring Authors so they can take ownership as an author. English is text driven and a fantastic wide range of texts are explored and different genres of writing within that one text.

Vernham Dean Gillum’s reading principles

*Reading is for everyone

*Reading is accessible for all

*To create love of the written word

*Discover new worlds and authors

*To use books to help us discover a world of wonder, diversity, information and imagination

Reading is highly valued at our school, each class has a devoted reading and as a school we love books. We have introduced the RED challenge this year which stands for Read Every Day. This encourages children to read at home every day and this is celebrated in school.

Each day the children have a reading session where key skills are taught which include teacher modelling and independent or group tasks.

In Early Years, our children enjoy learning phonics each day and are presented with many writing and reading opportunities linked into the children’s play both indoors and outdoors.

Assessment in English

Assessment is much more than just summative judgements made at the end of a unit, term or year of work. We as a team have formative assessment at the heart of what we do in the classroom. This is assessment which informs a learner’s next steps, either in that lesson or for the next day. It enables the learner to know where they are, where they need to get to and, perhaps most crucially, how they are going to get there. This is known as Assessment for Learning and is all about a dialogue between the teacher and the pupil. Children

provide evidence and teachers don’t need to rely on formal tests to make judgements as to how well a child is doing. Observation, careful questioning and thoughtful task design mean that tests are not part of our children’s learning journey.