Welcome to our English page!

Reading and writing are essential skills in all of our lives because we use them every day. Here at Repton Primary School, we work very hard at ensuring our English lessons are purposeful and interesting; teaching our children the important skills that will make them fantastic readers, amazing writers and successful learners. These skills are vital for all subjects in the curriculum because they all have some form of reading and writing in them. We purposefully plan in opportunities for reading and writing in other subjects so the children are transferring their skills.
 

Talk 4 Writing

We follow Pie Corbett’s Talk 4 Writing model to teach English throughout the school. When planning our English lessons we follow this 3 step model - innovate, imitate and invent.

Innovate- Engaging texts are chosen which the children learn using actions and by text mapping. New vocabulary is learnt that we ‘magpie’ from great authors to use and improve our writing.
 

Imitate-

A combination of both modelled and shared writing is used during this stage. Modelled writing is used as an effective teaching strategy for this stage so the children can see and hear how a ‘writer’ (teacher) thinks and makes decisions about sentence structure, vocabulary choices and punctuation in order to have an effect on the reader.

Invent-

The final step is for the independent application where the children invent their own text following the structure of the model text and the one completed together during the imitate stage. The final piece of writing is called the hot write.

Through marking, we ensure that the children know what they have achieved well and what they need to do to improve and progress their writing. Quality time is given in lessons for the children to be able to read the marking comments and then improve some of their writing.

For extra information on Talk 4 Writing please click on this link-

http://www.talk4writing.co.uk/about/

You can also watch Pie himself!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdvJZD-cplg - This is the imitate phase.

http://www.talk4writing.co.uk/portfolio-items/video-pie-demonstrating-talk-for-writing/ Pie demonstrating the different elements of Talk 4 Writing!

No Nonsense Spelling

From years 2 to 6, the children take part in No Nonsense Spelling sessions regularly throughout the week. No Nonsense Spelling is a new complete spelling programme designed to meet the needs of the 2014 National Curriculum in a manageable way. The focus of the programme is on the teaching of spelling, which embraces knowledge of spelling conventions – patterns and rules; but integral to the teaching is the opportunity to promote the learning of spellings, including statutory words, common exceptions and personal spellings.

Reading

Reading and comprehension are equally an important aspect of our curriculum too. Children are heard read as often as possible and reading sessions are completed everyday.

Comprehending a text is integral to the enjoyment of reading it – if you don’t understand what the text is about then it just becomes words on a page! Comprehension skills are taught in our curriculum as specific lessons and also through daily guided reading sessions.

We really encourage the children to read as often as possible, including at home. Every teacher reads aloud a class story book, which the children thoroughly enjoy hearing and sharing.

Our English curriculum is at the heart of what we teach and learn at Repton Primary School.

Mrs Pushkarich

(English Leader)