English
Intent
Our aim, at Storrington Primary School, is for our students to develop into creative, enthusiastic and confident readers and writers.
Fluent, accurate English skills are vital to support children’s learning and understanding across the whole curriculum throughout their education. Their journey begins as soon as they join school and continues to prepare them for their next steps through to transitioning to secondary school.
Reading is at the heart of our curriculum and we endeavour to expose children to a variety of texts, often linked with their topics or wider curriculum learning, depicting rich characters and diverse cultures. The need for children to enjoy reading and actively choose to read for different purposes informs this provision. Reading celebrations such as World Book Day, poetry days and half termly reading assemblies are used to emphasise the importance of reading and encourage children to read at home, both with their parents and independently.
Quality texts, in a range of different styles and formats, are used to inspire, motivate and model language choices for children and encourage them to explore how to communicate their ideas. Positive attitudes to reading and writing are fostered through carefully designed teaching activities and classroom provision; these may be discreet or cross-curricular, but they always build on prior knowledge and previous learning. We aim to make every lesson a language lesson, introducing new vocabulary and devising opportunities for children to explore etymology and manipulate the morphology of the language we come across.
The teaching of English at Storrington Primary School is considered, consistent and rigorous to ensure progress throughout the school. Reading, writing, speaking, listening, handwriting and spelling are taught discreetly, at an appropriate level, for children to develop into confident, independent and reflective learners of English literature and language.
At Storrington Primary School, we teach phonics using the Read Write Inc. scheme. This is a systematic way of teaching that builds on the children’s skills and teaches them to segment words into their separate phonemes (sounds) and blend them together to read the whole word.
We use Fred the Frog to help teach these skills.
The children are taught the phonemes in the following order:
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Initial sounds both consonants and vowel
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Digraphs ch, sh, th, qu, ng and nk
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Long vowel digraphs and trigraphs
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ay, ee, igh, ow, oo eg moon and oo eg look
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ar, or, air, ir, ou and oy
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split digraphs a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e and u_e
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ea, oi, ai, oa, aw, ur, er, ire, ear, ure, ew, are and ow eg cow
Children have daily phonics sessions where they are taught the next sounds that they need to use.
National Curriculum Overviews:
Expected GPS (Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling) Vocabulary:
National Curriculum Spelling Rules and Vocabulary
Useful Links:
Parent Information:
Suggested books for Year Groups:
EYFS Top 100 Recommended Reads
Year 1 Top 100 Recommended Reads
Year 2 Top 100 Recommended Reads
Year 3 Top 100 Recommended Reads
Year 4 Top 100 Recommended Reads