English Reading Intent
We aim to instil a love of reading in all of our students with the intent they become lifelong readers. By the time they leave Linden Road Academy, we strive for all pupils to read fluently, confidently and understand a wide range of texts, which will prepare them for Key Stage Three.
Throughout their journey through school, pupils are exposed to a carefully selected range of culturally diverse and highly engaging texts. Our selected texts accompany our termly topic theme, which encourages pupils to draw together their learning, vocabulary and knowledge of the world.
Our immersive classroom reading corners shelve high quality, age appropriate and topic related texts for children to enjoy and freely engage with.
In addition to our in-class reading corners, our Learning Zone is a vital resource for pupils to visit and explore. Here, pupils select books to read in class or at home with the support and guidance from their teacher. We encourage teachers and pupils to recommend books to each other, which further promotes a culture of enjoyment and reading for pleasure.
Learning to read at Linden Road begins in our Early Years Foundation Stage. From FS1, we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in FS1/FS2 and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school. We also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading.
Alongside phonics, reading sessions are taught in a variety of ways to ensure pupils develop deeper understanding including: specific vocabulary development, drama activities, creative responses and ‘book talk’ which take a deeper look at the author’s intent.
Vocabulary development is fundamental to our teaching practice. We ensure that vocabulary sessions are taught explicitly to enhance their understanding and to broaden their retained language, which can then be applied verbally and in their writing.
We teach verbal and written comprehension skills through VIPERS questioning (Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explain, Retrieve and Summarise). By using VIPERS, pupils become familiar with the question types and are encouraged to respond thoughtfully and thoroughly. From KS2, we also begin to deepen answers by using APE (Answer it Prove it Explain in) and PEE (Point Evidence Explain)
Throughout the year, we also host additional reading events such as:
- World Book Day
- Poetry week
- Traditional tales Assembly
- Summer Reading Challenge
- National Share a Story Week
- Book Exchanges
- Library visits
- Parental engagement reading sessions
- Author visits
You can follow our Reading learning by searching on Twitter @Linden_Reading or @Linden_Writing
Writing Intent
When our children leave Year 6, we strive to have pupils who are passionate about writing and see it as a way to express themselves. We wish to inspire children and set their imaginations free, whilst being able to set their pens (or pencils!) to a wide range of genres.
The sequence of writing begins with a carefully selected model text, which children will analyse with their teacher, pulling out features that make the model an excellent example of that genre.
From here, children are exposed to an exciting stimuli or hook - whether it be through trips, objects, mysterious events occurring or transporting them all over the world using our Immersive Classroom, giving their writing focus and purpose.
Next, children are provided with extracts from supplementary texts, to enable children to gather vocabulary and ideas. These supplementary texts are specifically chosen to enhance children’s exposure to a wide range of literature, broadening their writing with quality reading texts.
Specific teaching on Grammar and Punctuation in the form of a skills burst is an essential part of the writing process, giving children the opportunity to practise and embed new skills before applying it to their writing.
Following this, planning is a crucial stage of the writing process and teaching teams will contribute to the creation of effective plans by modelling and scaffolding to support children.
Once children are confident with the content and features of their writing, children will draft their writing, pulling together everything they have learnt from the sequence (and previous learning) thus far. When drafting, it is vital that our teaching teams continue to model to pupils how to take their plans to drafts, using effective sentence construction, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary.
Throughout the process, pupils have regular opportunities to collaborate with peers which supports them to apply their new learning and expand on their ideas.
High-quality feedback from teaching teams is given on both an individual and whole-class basis and can be given both verbally or in writing. Feedback on their draft allows children to improve their writing with a purple polish pen, ensuring that their writing is the best that it can be.
Genres, key texts, supplementary texts and models are selected by leaders to ensure the curriculum is delivered to the highest standard. Examples of some of our English planning can be found in the documents tab, as well as our Key Overviews of texts and genres.
You can also follow our Writing by searching on Twitter @Linden_Writing or check out our Learning Showcase!
Reading Documents
Home Reading Expectations
Writing Documents
Writing Progression
Key Text Overviews