Shaping Learning For Life
English
As a core subject, English plays a vital part in the education of children at Stockbridge, rooted in strong communication; language and listening as well as comprehension and speaking. A good grounding in these essential elements makes good readers and great writers.
With our pre-school being an integral part of the school and many of the children from pre-school feeding into our Year R class, we are able to ensure a rich diet of reading and early phonics work with enrichment in phase one of letters and sounds phonics.
This rich reading curriculum, which gives us the opportunity to develop children’s vocabulary and comprehension, continues into Year R and then all the way up to Year 6. Children are also spending an increasing amount of time watching films and TV so we have woven visual literacy in the form of films and short clips, into the reading curriculum – their comprehension of these being just as important as that of reading a book. Newspapers and magazines are an important part of our reading offer too.
Our librarians apply for the role themselves and support the development of a love of reading by leading assemblies, modelling book reviews, managing the library system and dreaming up all kinds of wonderful reading challenges and competitions.
How do we build children's literacy at Stockbridge?
Lower School text maps that inspire writing and develop reading
Year 1
The reading map for Year 1 sits alongside the Year 2 map with some differentiation of texts to ensure they receive the full Year 1 reading diet. Texts are linked, where possible, to their topics and enrich and enhance children’s knowledge so that curriculum lessons can be rich.
Year 2
As Year 2 are split across 2 classes and where possible, they do read the same books however, this is not always the case so their learning journey is carefully mapped out on the Year 1/2 maps or the Year 2/3 maps depending on their class. Even if they are accessing different books, writing outcomes and quality will be the same.
Year 3
Our Year 3 children, as part of the lower school, share their class with half of Year 2. They do need books that are more challenging and most children are enjoying their first chapter books independently so the reading diet reflects this more grown up approach.
Upper school texts to inspire writing and develop reading
Year 4
Year 4 is the first year in our ‘upper school’ where the children enter into more complex texts and need to access these increasingly independently. We have designed our own reading journals for Year 3 upwards so that they record new vocabulary they encounter in their reading and children take this very seriously in Year 4 as they hard to use the new vocabulary in their writing too.
Year 5
Usually, Year 5 would be split; half in Year 4/5 class and half in Year 5/6 for English and Maths as well as all other subjects however, with the catch up money available to support rapid progress after their COVID absence, Year 5 have a class of their own this year! This year is a great example of the school moving with the context of the class. A 80% boys vs girls with high levels of SEN, means we have thought carefully about the types and choices of texts all children can access and how we meet the needs of each group of pupils through the texts we choose.
Year 6
Although the texts are mapped out for the next 3 years for each year group, they are always under review as such brilliant texts are being published all the time. Again, a high % of boys are in this class with very specific interests and engaging all of them as well as the girls means we’ve had to deviate from the planned texts – the map below reflects current choices to engage all of our readers.