English Subject Report 2021

Subject English Date 11th January 2021 Report prepared by Serina Wheeler and Daisy Mills Overview of the year: Significant change has been brought about this year with the introduction of The Writing Rainbow and The Reading Rainbow (Jane Considine). This has meant that all fiction writing lessons and all reading lessons have been adapted and changed throughout the school to ensure consistency across the school and higher quality of teaching and learning in both subjects. Grammar is now embedded within lessons rather than taught explicitly. Timetables have been adapted to ensure that class teachers now have a minimum of ten minutes a day dedicated reading time to share a story with the children. This now means that all children are exposed to several high-quality texts throughout the year, alongside those studied within writing and reading lessons. Reading lessons have moved from 1 hour a week to four 30-minute sessions a week. Assessment in reading has been improved through the use of ScholarPack; there is a clear and succinct structure to assessing children’s progress within reading lessons.

Curriculum: Intent, implementation, Impact Intent Reading The aim of the recent implementation of the Reading Rainbow helps to develop not only the children’s understanding of the text they are reading but enables them to discuss and form opinions of the texts they are reading too. The structure of each lesson develops the children’s ability to form answers to questions that are supported by evidence from the text, alongside exposes them to rich texts and language. The intention behind all reading lessons and approaches is to promote a love for reading for every child in the school. Our new approach between reading and writing aims to blur the lines between the two subjects to ensure that the children can see ‘the writer’s eye’ when reading a book and understand the importance of the reader when writing. Writing The intent within writing at Ravenscote is for all children to have the skills and confidence to write across genres, use a wide range of vocabulary, apply the below SPAG skills (see Appendix 1) within their work and develop their passion for writing – particularly for boys. Texts chosen to focus on within lessons are carefully selected with every child in mind. The introduction of the Writing Rainbow allows the children to understand and use the key elements to write successfully across a range of texts and genres. Implementation Writing

• Within each year group, planning is rotated so that each member of the team takes responsibility for creating a series of high-quality and engaging lessons for the children. Sharing planning in this way enables more opportunity for new perspectives, a wider range of ideas and experience to be utilised, more time freed up to ensure that the needs of the curriculum are met and that planning is being updated where appropriate and necessary.

• There are 5 writing lessons a week, one per day usually. All units culminate in a final piece of independent writing – this is the children’s best work and should reflect all of the skills that they have learnt over the course of the unit, including opportunities for self-reflection and editing to improve their work.

• Once a half-term, the children have the opportunity to ‘showcase’ their favourite piece of writing in their Showcase Books. This provides the children with a sense of ownership and pride over their writing.

• Each unit of work is comprised of Experience Days, Sentence Stacking and Independent Writing lessons (examples of which can be seen in the attached planning.

• The writing lessons are based around ‘The Writing Rainbow’ (see Appendix 2) • English leaders have undertaken 10 hours of writing training and fed this back to staff through staff

meetings in the Summer term to help them prepare planning and delivery of lessons. Reading

• There are four 30-minute reading sessions a week that are planned by a reading planner. • These sessions are a combination of Book Talk and Whole Class comprehension sessions. • Book Talk sessions focus on a separate text to the whole class comprehension lessons. • Whole class comprehension lessons follow the same high-quality text as the class reader, which is read

to the children daily. • The reading lessons are based around ‘The Reading Rainbow’ (see Appendix 3)

• English leaders have undertaken 10 hours of reading training and fed this back to staff through staff meetings in the Autumn term to help them prepare planning and delivery of lessons.

• Each day, there is a minimum of ten minutes dedicated reading time where the class teacher shares a high-quality, engaging text with their classes.

• Our school library is moving to become a Book Bus (funded by the PTA). This is currently underway and should be completed at the latter end of the Spring term.

• We have had a virtual author visit from Sarah Holding in the Autumn term and are due to have a few more sessions booked in with various authors throughout the year. Some of these will be virtually visiting during English Week.

• Our Read Around the World system helps track reading at home for all children and allows them to travel from country to country using their personal reading passports. Certificates are awarded for children who complete their travels.

• Books that are read to the children are constantly updated and recently, we have invested in brand new books for all year groups to use within lessons.

Impact The children are able to write across a range of different genres and this includes different subjects. By the end of the year, children should be able to identify at least 3 texts that they have studied and be able to discuss these in depth. Evidence of reading will be evident within children’s writing through their vocabulary/ideas and differing writing techniques. Correct grammatical language is used across all year groups and within work produced. 5 Key messages of the year: What Performance Information is monitored? What

are the 3 questions are you considering for future developments?

1. Currently, our assessment for the Autumn term is showing that reading is our strongest subject out of Reading, Writing and Maths.

2. Engagement of children within writing and reading lessons has increased and children feel more confident to use rich language within their writing more than ever- evidence of this can be seen within children’s writing books.

3. Units of writing have been linked, where appropriate, to a high-level book or text – most of these are cross-curricular too.

4. Consistency of the teaching of reading and writing across the school is excellent – this is evident through planning and book monitoring.

5. Promoting a love of reading – this is an ongoing target but one we feel we have had a good impact upon this year (reading bus, new and engaging texts, daily story time, verbal lessons where no writing is required, more partner/group work, author visits etc. )

Monitored: • Teaching • Planning • Pupil Conferencing • Books

Key Questions:

1. How can we continue to develop a love of reading within the school and how can we provide concrete data to show progress with this?

2. How can we ensure that our progress in English is outstanding with the removal of SATs for two years? How can our internal monitoring systems be used more effectively and rigorously to show progress?

3. How can we further develop our writing assessment systems to enable further consistency amongst year groups?

4. How can we further support those children not reaching expected standard in writing, reading or SPAG? How can we further support those with SEND or who are Pupil Premium?

5. How can the teaching of poetry and play-scripts be developed further within the school?

What is progress like within this subject? How much funding did you receive this year and

what was it spent on? Good Due to two lockdowns (Covid-19) and the cancellation of SATs, we feel that we don’t have enough data to prove that our progress is outstanding yet. Gaps are still being plugged from the March 2020 lockdown and staff have worked hard during the Autumn term to help bridge these.

£2285 • First News subscriptions • Author visits • Spelling Shed • SPAG.com • Testbase

• High-quality texts for each year group (supported by further funding from the school)

• Jane Considine unit plans and resources (supported by further funding from the school)

• Display resources How does your subject area help to further develop SMSC in and around the school?

How are Fundamental British Values promoted within your subject?

Spiritual: Children are provided with opportunities to extract meaning beyond the literal, while engaging with ideas in fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama. Moral: Children learn morals through the texts that they read and write, e.g. fables. They also have to think about the messages the give to their audience when writing. Social: Pupils are always given the opportunity to support each other and work together. They magpie from each other and understand that working together improves the quality of ideas produced. Cultural: Pupils learn about and explore texts from other cultures.

• By encouraging further tolerance and harmony between different cultural traditions by helping them to experience texts/stories from other cultures. • By encouraging respect for other people in the lessons and drawing attention to this in the texts they read. • By helping children to distinguish right from wrong in texts. • By encouraging children to develop and communicate their own opinions and justify their thought process.

If you could change/ develop one thing in this area what would it be and why?

What will be the three key resources you will be bidding for this year and why?

• Writing assessment We feel that this is an area for improvement due to staff confidence with moderating and assessing writing against the ScholarPack objectives. We have noticed a lack of consistency between year groups.

1. More high-quality, rich books for all children to use during lessons – so that they have a book each.

2. Class Book Shelves to be updated so that the texts are of a higher-quality and aid children’s writing – children often use these shelves to choose a book for home reading

3. Writing and reading workshops delivered by authors.

Subject Web: WHY DO WE TEACH WHAT WE TEACH? 6 key skills:

1. High standard of correct English throughout all books 2. Correct grammar to be referred to wherever possible – e.g. Reading lessons and German and for correct

use of grammar and punctuation to be evident within all books that the children use 3. Spellings rules and national curriculum spellings should be correctly applied in all subjects 4. Vocabulary – children to use their new and exciting vocabulary in other lessons, not just within their

English lessons. We would like the children to become confident enough to use this vocabulary within their everyday conversation.

5. Developing the children’s imagination – creative thinking (E.g. Art/DT, music) 6. Reading comprehension– (R.E, reason and justify thinking/maths reasoning)

How do you ensure every skill is taught within your subject? Through monitoring of planning and books. We have evaluated the National Curriculum to ensure that we cover all aspects within our planning – we have identified poetry and playscripts as an area for continued development.

Topics taught across each year group (with cross-curricular links identified):

AT1 AT2 SP1 SP2 SU1 SU2 Pirates Egyptians Fairy tales 3 Pirates

Performance poetry

The secret life of black rock

Robots

The Egyptians The Day the Crayons Quit

Fairy tales Lighthouse

The Incredible book eating boy

Star in a jar George’s

marvellous medicine

The stone Age The monarchy Europe Water Food Romans 4 The stone age

boy Newspaper

reports

Dragons The Lost Thing

Christmas poetry

Reports on Europe Jumanji

Fiction writing on Flotsam

Non-fiction report on rivers

Feast BFG

Escape from Pompei

Poetry on volcanoes

Non-fiction letter writing

America The Rainforest - Brazil

Space The Mayans The Tudors London

5 The Ridge Shakelton’s

Journey

The explorer The Great Kapok

tree Rainforest

poetry

Cosmic Space

Robin hood Balanced argument

Robin Hood poetry

The Highwayman

poetry

The nowhere emporium

WW2 Disaster and spooky stories

Asia Light People

6 WW2 – diaries, descriptive

writing, information

leaflets

Titanic – recount,

newspaper article

Spooky stories

David Attenborough:

non-chorological reports

Persuasive

letters

Story writing: Lost Happy

Endings

Story writing: La Luna

Revision:

comprehension

Revision: grammar

Story writing: Treasure

Book study: The Giant’s Necklace

Rationale for curriculum organisation: (to include time allocation)

• 5 writing lessons a week allows for 5 hours of dedicated writing teaching. • Four 30-minute reading lessons a week allows for 2 hours of dedicated reading teaching • 10 minutes a day to share a class story allows for 50 minutes a week of hearing their teacher read. • As mentioned above, shared planners for English enable for a wide range of expertise and more time to

update the curriculum to meet the needs of the children. What have you done to confirm that everything in the National Curriculum is covered? As mentioned above, we have evaluated the National Curriculum to ensure that we cover all aspects within our planning – we have identified poetry and playscripts as an area for continued development. Describe what a good learner of this subject looks like when they leave RJS.

1. Someone who is a confident writer and is able to write effectively in a range of genres with a sound understanding of purpose and audience to equip them for real life situations later in life.

2. They would write in proper English with a secure understanding of grammatical features in writing. 3. We would expect them independently be able to reflect on their writing and show the ability to edit and

improve their writing with resilience. 4. It is also important that children leave our school with a flair for English; showing a creative flair that they

can apply to other subjects too. 5. We would like children to leave RJS, loving reading - with the understanding of what makes a book

enjoyable to them and be able to form opinions about what they like/dislike and why. 6. To be able to recommend books and explain their reasons why and to be able to identify books that they

have studied within their time at Ravenscote. 7. To feel a sense of pride and accomplishment when they have finished a book.

What does Live Marking look like in your subject? How do you know this has been effective for children’s progress?

What training and development have you received in your subject? What has been the impact of this on the children?

Live marking in English allows for children to receive high-quality feedback from their teacher regularly. By ensuring that feedback is given verbally, the children develop a greater understanding of their next steps and are able to see praise for their work, encouraging them for their next piece of writing. Reading: Teachers are expected to fill out the formative assessment objectives on ScholarPack regularly following the reading lessons. Writing: Teachers are expected to fill out a teacher reflection sheet twice a week, identifying those children who have excelled and those who need misconceptions addressed. These sheets link to the ScholarPack objectives.

• 20 hours of Jane Considine online training providing a brand-new approach to reading and writing

• Moderation training to support accuracy in moderation

• Online training of ways to promote a love for reading

Appendix 1

Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6

Wor

d

• Prefixes • Use of the forms ‘a or an’ • Word families

• The grammatical difference between plural and possessive –s

• Correct use of Standard English

• Converting nouns or adjectives into verbs

• The difference between informal speech and formal speech and writing

• Synonyms and antonyms

Sent

ence

• Expressing time, place and cause using conjunctions, adverbs or prepositions

• Expanded noun phrases • Fronted adverbials

• Relative clauses • Indicating degree of

possibility through adverbs and modal verbs

• Passive voice • Structures of informal

and formal writing • Subjunctive form

Text

• Paragraphs • Headings- subheadings • Present perfect form of

verbs

• Paragraphs • Pronouns

• Building cohesion within paragraphs

• Adverbials of time

• Wider range of cohesive devices (eg: adverbials, ellipsis)

• Layout devices

Punc

tuat

ion

• Inverted commas for speech

• Inverted commas for speech, including commas after reporting clause

• Apostrophes for plural possession

• Commas after fronted adverbials

• Brackets, dashes or commas to indicate parenthesis

• Commas to clarify

• Semi-colon, colon and dash to mark the boundary between independent clauses

• Colon to introduce a list and semi-colon.

• Bullet points • Hyphens to avoid

ambiguity.

Term

inol

ogy

for p

upils

• preposition, conjunction,

• word family, • prefix clause,

subordinate clause, • direct speech, • consonant, consonant

letter, • vowel, • vowel letter, • inverted commas (or

‘speech marks’)

• determiner • pronoun, • Possessive pronoun,

adverbial.

• modal verb, • relative pronoun relative

clause parenthesis, bracket,

• dash cohesion, ambiguity

• subject, • object, • active, • passive • synonym, • antonym • ellipsis, • hyphen, • colon, • semi-colon, • bullet points

Appendix 2 – The Writing Rainbow

Appendix 3 – The Reading Rainbow