Intent, Implementation and Impact 

While children are at Kings Furlong Junior School, they learn English skills that equip them to meet the demands of the curriculum here, in the next phase of their education and throughout their lives.  They have an appreciation of the written and spoken word.  They read fluently and choose to read for pleasure.  They express themselves verbally and on paper in an increasingly articulate and confident manner using precise and effective vocabulary.  Their English skills are not a barrier to any ambition they may have.  The design of our curriculum provides opportunities for the children to build cultural capital. The school has a coherently planned and sequenced curriculum that ensures there is depth and breadth to allow all children to succeed whatever their starting points are. 

Reading and English lessons are planned and taught on a daily basis which are supported by regular spelling lessons.  Teachers plan learning journeys in English and reading that enable the coverage of the curriculum as well as meeting the next steps of each child in their class based on effective Assessment for Learning (AfL).  Adults and resources are deployed to best meet the needs of the children.  Verbal feedback is given during the lesson and work is marked according to the school’s Marking, Feedback and Presentation policy. Each reading journey is assessed using an activity linked to the key question.  This determines if a child is achieving over a period of time.  Each writing journey includes an independent writing activity which is judged against specific success criteria.  These assessment activities are used to make judgements about attainment as well as being used to continuously shape learning across the year for groups and individuals.

Through quality first teaching, targeted support and variation, our children are at least at the expected standard in both reading and writing and are, therefore, ‘secondary ready’.  For children who entered key stage two working significantly below ARE, barriers are reduced so they are able to read with sufficient fluency to access the secondary curriculum and to express themselves orally and on paper. 

Click on the stars for the reading and writing curriculum in each year group.

Spelling and Phonics

Phonics

Phonics teaches children how to recognise the sounds that each individual letter makes, identify the sounds that different combinations of letters make - such as 'sh' or 'oo'; and blend these sounds together from left to right to make a word.

Recognising and using phonics is fundamental to children being independent readers.  We achieve this by building on the systematic synthetic phonics program the children have experienced at Key Stage 1.  Some children need extra support with embedding and applying the segmenting and blending skills learnt at Key Stage 1 and use the Read Write Inc programme to do this.

How do we teach phonics?

Upon joining the school, year 3 (and older newcomers as appropriate) are assessed in both their phonetic knowledge and phonological awareness. This assessment leads to mixed aged groupings based on the need of the individual. Each group receives four, 30 minute, phonics sessions a week. We use the Read Write Inc programme to deliver our phonics and have adapted it to prioritise use of the phonics and key reading activities. Within these sessions, children also have activities to develop their phonological awareness. We use the Hertfordshire Phonological Awareness pack for this. 

Spelling 

Principles for good spelling

Spelling is underpinned by phonic knowledge.  This is an understanding of GPCs (grapheme phoneme correspondences e.g. c-a-t or sh-oa-l ) Spelling also depends upon children’s understanding of morphology (how words are structured) and etymology (where words come from).  Our teaching of spelling is based on these three areas.

Spelling Programme

At the start of each academic year, teachers test their class on the previous year’s RWI spelling test.  Using the gaps identified in the test, teachers plan spelling lessons, clearly differentiating according to pupil need.   

For the remainder of the year, spelling teaching, for the core of each class, uses the RWI spelling programme.  The children have differentiated word lists within each rule and use pupil practice books to support their learning.  At the end of the RWI spelling programme teachers re-test children to track their progress. Children who are working below this standard have their own set of key spellings and rules.

The RWI programme is heavily child centred and has a significant amount of peer partner support to increase the participation of every child.