English
At Benedict Biscop we want our children to learn that all things are possible. We want our children to aspire and to achieve highly. We actively encourage cross-curricular learning, to give pupils maximum opportunity to transfer skills and knowledge, developing our children’s spoken language, reading, writing, grammar, spelling and vocabulary through everything they do. We believe that a thorough grasp of literacy skills is crucial to a high-quality education and will give our children the tools they need to participate fully as a member of society. We know that the sooner children learn to read, the greater their success at school, therefore we put reading at the heart of what we do. We endeavour to engender a life – long love of reading. We recognise that mastery in phonics is fundamental to children being able to access a broad range of genres, across the curriculum. We aim to achieve this by teaching phonics using a highly structured and systematic approach using “Letters & Sounds” with a relentless drive to address the needs of all learners. We strive to ensure children become inquisitive about language and its structure, developing creative and enquiring minds, which make connections, problem-solve and learn collaboratively. We want children not only to learn to read but to read in order to learn; reading exposes children to more than just words on a page, it opens their minds to different worlds, characters and experiences and it is inseparable from the writing process. Our aim is to ensure children are motivated to write, take pride in their writing, can write clearly and accurately and adapt their language and style for a range of contexts. We want to inspire children to be confident in the arts of speaking and listening and who can use discussion to develop their learning; we want our children to learn that all things are possible!
Phonics
At Benedict Biscop we use Letter & Sounds teach phonics.
There are 4 elements to a Letters and Sounds session: review, teach, practise and apply.
- Review – Flashcards should be used daily to recap graphemes previously taught. Along with a reading or writing activity reviewing the previous week/days learning. This section should be very fast paced and allow children to apply their prior learning quickly.
- Teach – This section should have some new learning and teach reading or writing skills. It should include any songs and actions to support children’s learning and understanding.
- Practise – This section should allow children to practise their reading/writing skills. This could be done with words, phrases or sentences. Children should be supported where necessary and work among peers e.g. playing games together to apply their teach section.
- Apply – This section should give children the opportunity to apply their skills independently through reading/writing a range of words/phrases/sentences in games.
