English

In Portobello Primary it is our intent to develop English skills in preparation for our children leading lives as successful, valuable and socially responsible citizens.  We have aligned our curriculum for English with the National Curriculum for English for 2014. Our school is a place where everyone is given an education that builds on their strengths and addresses their individual needs to ensure progression. We believe that all children should be able to achieve their full potential academically, socially, emotionally and physically. Through our curriculum, we provide rich purposeful opportunities for reading, writing and discussion. We endeavour for all of our children to be proficient readers, writers, spellers and confident speakers, who can transfer their English skills to all areas of learning in the curriculum and are prepared for a lifelong journey as learners. We embrace the differences in all our children and celebrate their individual successes and achievements. Therefore, we provide bespoke personalised learning where planning is adjusted for individuals or groups of learners and the English curriculum adapted to avoid overloading the working memory and ensure children remember more, can do more, and make progress. 

We are passionate that our environment promotes a love of books and reading where children feel inspired to read. High quality materials, such as quality texts are used to provide quality teaching and learning sequences. Books are given their rightful place throughout the school. Each room has a class library where books are displayed in a variety of ways. In addition, a display of topic books, dictionaries and thesauruses are easily accessible to the children. We are passionate about teaching our children the importance of equality and equity and what forms discrimination can take, believing it is important for children to feel represented within their school community. Therefore, we also dedicate a section of the library to books promoting diversity, which feature a range of diverse characters. These books are frequently used by all classes as a teaching tool or reading for pleasure. We inspire children to take pride in their writing and teach them to write clearly, imaginatively and accurately and adapt their language and style for a range of contexts. We nurture children to be confident in the art of speaking and listening and to use discussion to communicate and further their learning in all areas of the curriculum and express themselves.  

We prioritise the teaching and learning of Phonics and Early Reading and recognise the value of a systematic synthetic phonics programme to teach children letter-sound relationships. From Reception onwards, Phonic and Early Reading sessions are explicitly taught following Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. We follow this scheme’s programme progression with rigour and fidelity. A ‘can do’ attitude towards Phonics and Early Reading is firmly established within our school community. Our outdoor physical environment enables our children to lead happy and healthy lives, therefore it is vital to their all-round development and can be used to develop skills in; fine and gross motor or language which have a direct impact in the progress and standards of reading, writing and speaking skills. Similarly, speaking skills are vitally important for developing and maintaining a healthy mind. As soon as the children enter our setting, we give them the tools, trust and confidence to know they are safe in school and to be able to talk to us about things happening in their lives and how they feel. 

Reading

 

Learning to read is one of the most important things your child will learn at our school. Everything else depends on it, so we put as much energy as we possibly can into making sure that every single child learns to read with secure decoding skills, prosody so they can bring words to life and with excellent comprehension skills. We endeavour for all our children to be proficient readers; therefore, we teach early reading skills as quickly as possible and continue to build on them as they progress through school.  It is our intention that reading is firmly embedded across the entire curriculum and children understand that reading is important to gain both information and knowledge, but not only that, they choose to do so for the love, passion and pleasure of picking up a book of their choice.  We are passionate that our environment promotes a love of books and reading where children feel inspired to read. Considerable emphasis is placed upon creating a challenging and stimulating language rich environment and providing our children with a wide range of texts.

 

There’s lots more information about Reading at Portobello in the documents below.

Writing
 
At Portobello Primary School we inspire children to take pride in their writing and teach them to write clearly, imaginatively, and accurately and adapt their language and style for a range of contexts. Writing is linked to a class text that has been carefully selected to: ensure exposure to quality literature; further develop cultural capital and engage in the writing of a variety of authors. The teaching of spelling, punctuation and grammar is fully integrated into the teaching sequences. Through contextualising high-quality punctuation and grammar in our quality reading texts our children confidently apply their learning in their writing. Every half term children produce a variety of shorter and extended pieces of writing.
Spelling
 
Phonic and Spelling sessions are explicitly taught. Here our children receive direct teaching in short burst and pace of learning is maintained. Children are provided with the tools they need to be successful in spelling; for example, grapheme mats, dictionaries, thesauruses and working walls.  Our curriculum is organised in such a way to give children the opportunity to apply their Phonics and Spelling skills outside of discrete sessions, to give them crucial practise to embed skills.
Handwriting
 
Children are taught handwriting skills in discrete sessions as well as being encouraged to present learning to a high standard across the curriculum. Spelling of common exception words is practiced during handwriting sessions. You will find some of our Little Wandle letter formation resources and Years 2 - 6 common exception word Power Points below.