English here at Morpeth All Saints…

At Morpeth All Saints First School, we believe that literacy and communication are key life skills. It is our role, through the English curriculum, to help children develop the skills and knowledge that will enable them to communicate effectively and creatively with the world at large, through spoken and written language. Through a love of reading that is embedded within our school, we strive to help children to enjoy and appreciate literature and its rich variety.

Aims and Objectives:

At our school, our intent is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping children with a strong command of the spoken and written word, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading both across the curriculum and at home. Through the implementation of our English curriculum, we aim to ensure that all pupils:

  • read easily, fluently and with good understanding
  • develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
  • acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
  • appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
  • write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
  • use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas
  • are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate.

Reading At Morpeth All Saints

At Morpeth All Saints we are passionate about reading. Reading is a vital skill that supports children’s learning across the whole curriculum. We want children in our school to become enthusiastic, independent and reflective readers. We want our children to enjoy reading and to use the skill to become independent learning citizens in our society.

In our school, we strive to give pupils a stimulating and engaging curriculum and learning environment, where reading materials are presented in an attractive and inviting way. Furthermore, within reading lessons we create an environment that stimulates the generation of ideas from texts where all ideas are accepted and valued. Teachers will act as role models in their enthusiasm for both reading and writing by keeping up to date with current children’s literature.

Our reading curriculum features texts from Pie Corbett’s recommended reading spine, books that support understanding of a diverse society and a range of classic and modern texts and poetry.

Reading in Early Years

Reading is a high priority within Early Years and underpins everything we do. This includes making sure topics taught are built around a wide selection of books linked to children’s interests. In Reception, children are taught the technical skills of reading through systematic synthetic phonics lessons following Little Wandle – Letters and Sounds revised. Children are also taught how to talk about books through whole class Guided Reading. Books chosen for Guided Reading sessions are carefully selected to extend our children’s learning experiences and interests as well as to provide them with opportunities to deepen their cultural capital.

Reading in Key Stages 1 and 2

Children in Years 1-4 continue to be supported with developing their phonic knowledge through Little Wandle, reading fluency, accuracy and stamina as well as the progression of comprehension skills. This is achieved through both group and whole-class reading sessions and reading for pleasure. In key stage 2, children are taught in whole class reading sessions using the principles of the Talk for Reading approach. Children continue to build on their prior knowledge of phonics by exploring complex vocabulary, etymology, morphology and patterns in language.

Reading Spine

Updated Long term plan

Writing

Since September 2024, Morpeth All Saints has embedded ‘Talk For Writing’ as our writing curriculum. ‘Talk For Writing’ (TFW) is an engaging, rigorous and creative teaching framework developed by Pie Corbett.  TFW is based on the principles of  imitation to innovation to independent application to help students develop writing skills for a range of purposes.

Our aim at Morpeth All Saints, through using the TFW approach, is for children to become even more excited to read, write and express themselves. We aim for children to develop confidence in becoming articulate storytellers, readers and writers.

What is Talk for Writing? Pie Corbett explains

Each focus story and unit of work lasts 3-4 weeks. The stories are progressive in content and language from Nursery to Year 4 using our carefully chosen reading spine.  The children are provided opportunities to study a range of fiction and non-fiction texts.  Throughout each module we focus on developing skills linked to a specific genre of writing using a scaffolded ladder of skills for each toolkit.   The children are supported throughout the unit to develop their writing and storytelling skills to complete their own independent piece of writing.

Phases of the Talk for Writing approach

Year Group Plans

Useful links

Phonics- Little Wandle- Parents Page
Phonics- Little Wandle- Parents Presentation.pdf