ENGLISH

At Star of the Sea our aim is that children will become confident and independent readers, writers and speakers with a love and understanding of words and the possibilities that they open up for us. This underpins learning in all curriculum subjects. We will promote an engagement with texts to foster a lifelong love of books and a culture of reading widely and often. Children will have many, varied opportunities to read for pleasure and for information, to write for different audiences and to speak for different purposes. We intend that children will be confident in transferring these skills across every aspect of life and will become excellent communicators. We want children's experience of the English curriculum to be an exciting, meaningful and creative experience with personal highlights that they will remember as they move forwards.

Star of the Sea Reading Spine.

These are the books that teachers will read aloud to pupils every day purely for reading pleasure and enjoyment. Our reading spine rationale and choices are based on:

Doug Lemov’s ‘5 Plagues of the Developing Reader’ (archaic texts, non-linear time sequences, complexity of the narrator, complexity of plot/symbol and resistant texts); and also, on our ethos of inclusivity and intent to reflect realities in our chosen texts. In this way children will experience a range of carefully selected books, genres, characters and authors.

EYFS will read books in two strands to learn about both narrative convention and the wider world.  As they do so, we will ensure they encounter ‘The Big 5’ Michael Rosen, Julia Donaldson, Eric Carle, Shirley Hughes, Allan Ahlberg.

Finally, our Reading Spine is dynamic and fluid. It is constantly under review and it will change to meet the needs of each class.

Take a look at the current texts by clicking on the documents below.

Essential Letters and Sounds Phonics

Early reading is taught using systematic synthetic phonics throughout EYFS and KS1. This is taught through daily Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) lessons. Our school day begins with every child learning ELS phonics. These lessons teach the children to decode sounds, blend them to form words and apply their skills to encourage fluency and comprehension.

To find out more about the sounds your child will learn and how to support them with their learning, please use the following link:

https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-schemes-oxford-levels/essential-letters-and-sounds/ 

As the children learn new sounds, they read storybooks closely matched to their developing phonic knowledge.  The sessions are fast paced and interactive to ensure the children make rapid progress and their progress is assessed regularly. Children are encouraged to sound and blend as a technique when reading and to apply their phonic knowledge in their writing, spelling words using the sounds they know.