One of the most important aspects of a child’s primary school experience is learning to read and write. We do this by nurturing a love of language, and this underpins our approach to English. In line with the National Curriculum, the children at Tackley CE Primary School are taught Spoken Language; Reading (both word recognition and comprehension); Writing (both transcription and composition); Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar.
In our English lessons, we plan our teaching of language, reading, writing and grammar through units of work focussed on texts. We have regular writing opportunities where children write independently for extended periods of time applying the skills that they have been taught during lessons.
Reading
We strongly encourage every child to read at home every night. This is an important area where parents and carers can actively support their child’s learning. At Tackley CE Primary school we have our list of 100 Great Books to Read, which we encourage parents to read and sign off with the children to receive their certificates.
Booktrust Great Books Guide 2018
Writing
We encourage children to ‘be writers’ from their first day in school and use a variety of teaching strategies to develop these skills.
They include:
- Purposes for writing
- Styles of writing
- Editing and work processing skills
- Basic skills of handwriting, phonics and sentence structure
Assessment of Writing
We use the Hertfordshire Grid for Learning Teacher Assessment Frameworks to assess writing across the school. Writing is assessed six times a year and next steps are identified for the children to work on. This target is included in their English books and children are encouraged to self assess their targets.
Below are the Teacher Assessment Framework grids we use to assess children’s writing for each year group.
| Year One | Year Two |
| Year Three | Year Four |
| Year Five | Year Six |
Spelling
How spelling is taught
At Tackley CE Primary School spelling is taught in individual year groups during Monday’s English lesson. Children will be taught a particular spelling pattern or rule and they will be given strategies to help them learn the spellings. During the lesson they will be given activities to practise and consolidate the learning of their spelling patterns.
Each child will be given a list of ten spellings to learn, in school, throughout that week. They will be given time to practise them each morning and will then be tested on Fridays, testing will take the format of dictation, so that the children become familiar with the words in context. The last week of term will recap all of the spelling patterns taught that term to consolidate the children’s learning.
Please find below the spelling words to be taught each week for each year group. You can print this out and keep a copy at home, and practise with your children alongside the learning of the spellings they do in school.
Spelling overview – whole school
Autumn Term One
Autumn Term Two