Please see our Phonics page for information on this programme we use in Early Years.

Reading

At Stanstead, we celebrate reading throughout every phase of a child’s development. Our children’s reading journey begins in the Early Years, where children are exposed to daily phonic instruction and oral story telling. This is further enhanced through Launchpad reading lessons. This is further built on in Year One, where the children enjoy texts as a class and further enhance their understanding of texts. This then grows into appreciating texts at greater depth and analysing them in greater detail, using Complete Comprehension as a vehicle to deliver our reading lessons from (Spring) Year 2 to 6.

It is important to us at Stanstead that our curriculum is vocabulary rich, so teachers read carefully chosen texts to the children every day. The children are exposed to a wide range of stories, poetry and information books. They learn many more exciting words this way and it also inspires their writing.

Reading for Pleasure

At our school, we foster a love of reading by creating a vibrant reading culture where books are celebrated every day. Each class visits the school library every week to explore new books and choose a reading for pleasure book to take home. Children enjoy regular story time and have access to inviting reading spaces where books are organised by topic and genre, helping them to easily find stories and information that match their interests. We encourage pupils to choose books that excite them, talk about what they read, and share recommendations with their peers. Families can support reading for pleasure at home by setting aside time to read together, discussing favourite stories, and helping children explore books that reflect their passions. Together, we can nurture confident, enthusiastic lifelong readers.

How do we teach reading in Nursery?

In Nursery, we enjoy listening to stories, learn lots of new language through stories and play. Through their phonics lessons, our Nursery children develop the pre-phonic skills that will give them a solid foundation for learning to read and spell. This includes the skills of Sound Discrimination; Body Percussion; Alliteration; Rhyme and Rhythm; Voice Sounds and Oral Segmenting and Blending. We begin

with the Learning Lady super sounds which focuses on developing pre-phonic skills through a step-by- step carefully crafted sequence of learning.

Starting in Spring Term, the children also have a Code of the Week. This is taught through the use of Phonics and Talk Time resources, which feeds into the No Nonsense Phonics Skills SSP the children start with in Reception.

How do we teach reading in Reception and Key Stage 1?

We start our phonics lessons right from the beginning of our children’s Reception journey. We teach phonics using No Nonsense Phonics Skills (NNPS) resources to ensure consistency and a high-level of challenge in our children’s phonics journey. The children progress from mastering simple to more complex alphabetic code, which the children apply at both word and text level. The children also practise reading (and spelling) common exception words, such as ‘the,’ ‘said,’ ‘once’ and ‘where’.

The NNPS programme itself contains matched decodable texts which the children use for both reading and spelling practise, but we also send home Big Cat Phonics decodable books to consolidate the phonics that has been previously taught. The children practise their independent reading with these fully decodable books that match the phonics and the common exception words they have already been taught. They are empowered to apply the skills they have been taught to read their decodable book with confidence and fluency.

Early Years and KS1 (Autumn term in Year 2) follow Launchpad Reading which builds a bridge between phonics lessons and the drive to enable all children to become successful readers. Launchpad Reading is a daily reading approach that gives children the opportunity to apply their phonics knowledge and quickly develop the skills, knowledge and understanding needed to become a successful reader.

How do we teach reading from Year 2 to Year 6?

From (Spring) Year 2 to Year 6 the children learn to appreciate texts at a greater depth and analyse them in greater detail, using Complete Comprehension as a vehicle to deliver our reading lessons. This scheme has been adapted to suit the

needs of the school and our lesson design approach, with a huge focus on vocabulary and the children being active readers. We have also adapted the programme to support children in reading fluently.

Children are exposed to high quality, age-appropriate texts throughout reading lessons. Our texts are also chosen based on the richness of learning they bring to our specific reading skills. We aim to cover a wide variety of authors, genres and topics to broaden our children’s horizons and widen their children’s cultural capital. In lesson one, children explore the vocabulary in the text, breaking down any issues in terms of understanding. In lesson two, the children discuss the text as a whole, making sense of it so that they can access lesson 3 and 4, where the children learn a specific reading skill, linked to comprehension. These skills are constantly revisited throughout the year. They are: word meaning, retrieval, summarising, inference, prediction, relationships (in terms of structure and characters), word choice, author intent and comparison.

How do I know the teaching will be effective?

All staff have been trained to teach reading in the way we do it at Stanstead and we work closely with the Flying High Partnership to ensure our phonics and reading teaching practices are up to date. We believe that it is very important that all teachers and teaching assistants work in the same way. The English Lead and Senior Leadership Team observe and support other teachers teaching phonics and Reading sessions to ensure that teaching is effective.

How can parents help?

From Reception, children will bring two books home from school. One will be a decodable book, based on the phonics codes they have been taught and the other a Reading for Pleasure book, which is for children and parents to share and enjoy together at home. As children move through school and complete their phonics programme of study, they will then bring home a Book Banded book and a Reading for Pleasure book as they will no longer require a phonically decodable text.

One of the best ways you can support your child is to read these books with them at least three times a week to help them improve their fluency and pace. Please trust your child’s teacher to choose the book(s) that will help your child the most.

When listening to your child read their decodable book, help your child to sound out the codes in words and then to blend the sounds together to make a whole word. Then ask them to re read the sentence you have just read together. This helps them to read with fluency. (Please see below for a ‘How to Read with your Child at Home’ information sheet)

We know parents and carers are very busy people. But if you can find time to read to your child as much as possible, it helps them to learn about books and stories. They also learn new words and what they mean. Show that you are interested in reading yourself and talk about reading as a family.

Parents Reading Meeting

Please click on here to watch a video recording of the parents reading meeting. This covers, how we teach reading at Stanstead, how we develop a love of reading and how you can support your child at home.

Writing

At Stanstead Flying High Academy, we believe that the ability to write with independence, confidence and accuracy is an essential life skill. Writing is a complex process; it is the ability to effectively communicate ideas, information and opinions through the printed word, in a wide range of contexts. Successful writers understand the social function and characteristics of writing in order to use different genres appropriately, matching it to audience and purpose. Writing also requires the writer to understand and accurately apply the conventions of syntax, spelling and punctuation. We aim to equip children with the skills necessary to achieve this, throughout our curriculum

Our aims are for all children at Stanstead Flying High Academy are to:

• Write with confidence, clarity and imagination
• Understand and apply knowledge of phonics and spelling
• Understand how to write in a range of genres (including fiction, non-fiction and poetry), using the appropriate style, structure and features
• Understand a range of punctuation marks and use them accurately across a range of text types
• Plan, draft, revise and edit their own work, and learn how to self and peer-assess
• Develop a broad range of vocabulary and use it accurately

Writing is taught on a daily basis within English lessons. However, high expectations of writing are also held across all other curriculum lessons. So new skills taught within writing lessons can be applied within other contexts across all other lessons.

We follow the National Curriculum (2014) which ensures that a range of genres are covered, identifying those that best link into the topic, including narrative, non-fiction (e.g., persuasive texts, non-chronological reports, information texts, recounts, reports and letters) and poetry.

Teachers link the writing genre and outcome with the overarching termly enquiry question, creating an authentic purpose for writing. Genres are taught across the whole school, with clear progression and guidance outlined with the expectations for each year group to ensure children are being introduced to new skills and features every year, building on skills and previous knowledge.

Writing is taught through a carefully planned sequence of lessons which build towards the children producing an independent piece of writing where they are encouraged to showcase all of the features and skills that they have been taught throughout the unit of writing. Each unit focuses on a particular genre of writing and will incorporate a variety of the following teaching strategies.

Modelling Writing

The teacher talks aloud the thought processes as a writer. They model strategies in front of the children, communicating the strategies being used. Teachers may model writing skills such as punctuation, rehearsal, proof reading, editing, word selection, sentence construction and paragraphing.

Shared Writing

This is a collaborative approach in which the pupils contribute their ideas and thoughts for the teacher to write. The teacher models and teaches specific writing skills and there is the opportunity for discussion to choose the most effective or suitable idea.