English
Writing at Felix Primary School
Children must develop muscles in their hands to enable them to hold tools for writing such as pencils and crayons. Fine motor skills work begins in the early years and continues through Key Stage 1 to support this.
Together, we build writing skills year on year following the National Curriculum guidance. Our writing lessons are taught through The Write Stuff which is a renowned scheme that builds pupil's confidence, widens their repertoire and raises their standards. Experience days enable children to learn content to support their writing in a fun and engaging manner whilst continuously striving to develop vocabulary. Writing days are carefully planned to teach children skills for writing, to teacher model them effectively and to enable opportunity for independent application. During these lessons, pupils are guided in their writing. At the end of each unit, they are given the opportunity to plan and write at length independently, practising the skills learnt in the unit.
Reading at Felix Primary School
We are absolutely delighted to have a new library at Felix this year, filled with lots of beautiful new books for the children to enjoy.
Phonics – Read Write Inc
We use a specialised phonic programme named Read Write Inc
In order to teach this programme:
• Children are grouped by ability so they learn rapidly at the right level.
• Previous sounds are revisited frequently so learning is consolidated.
• New sounds are applied in reading and writing.
• All children are involved in lessons and receive immediate feedback.
• Commonly used words are frequently revisited enabling children to quickly develop an effective sight vocabulary.
This is Fred Frog.
Fred is a character who can only say and read words in pure sounds. When we ‘ Fred Talk’ we break words into individual sounds. This helps us blend (read) and segment (spell).
F-R-E-D I-S A F-R-0-G
First, we teach pure sounds- it is important that adults model these correctly. To hear an example of hoe to say the sounds visit: Phonics
There are single letter sounds and sounds made from more than one letter, we call these “special friends” as they work together to make one sound. e.g. sh, ch, nk
After, we have learnt the individual sounds we learn how to blend them to make words.
We use ‘Fred Fingers’ to help us identify the individual sounds in a word to help us to spell.
When the children have learnt these skills they are ready to read.
We also teach tricky words or high frequency words know as red words.
Guided reading
In class we teach reading through guided reading sessions 4 times per week. Each class has a carefully chosen book as a focus each term. For two sessions each week, the teacher reads to the children, fostering a love of reading and modelling fluency. For the other two sessions, comprehension skills are taught based on the book. These skills are taken from the National Curriculum.
