Pellentesque at augue ut neque laoreet ullamcorper. Curabitur suscipit felis vitae quam luctus laoreet. Aliquam vehicula mattis dolor a mollis. Quisque lacinia tempus ligula, sed scelerisque ante ultrices in. Cras gravida velit ipsum, quis mattis mi vehicula ut. Morbi purus lorem, finibus at pharetra at, blandit tempor risus.
Reading
At Carnforth, we love reading. We believe that reading is the cornerstone to learning. A love of reading is nurtured through opportunities to read a range of exciting books, for a range of purposes, but most importantly – to enjoy them. Reading underpins our curriculum and our thematic approach to learning. At Carnforth, we build regular opportunities for children to be exposed to a range of rich, high quality texts through many different aspects of the curriculum, not just in reading and writing. We believe a child’s reading journey begins when they are a baby, through sharing books at home. As they enter school, our aim is nurture this love of reading.
‘I love reading because it’s fun and it helps your writing as well. It’s great having loads of new books in our library too – it makes me want to read even more!’
The skill of reading fluently is taught systematically on a daily basis using the Read, Write, Inc phonics programme. This provides the children with the mechanics they need to read confidently. Throughout the curriculum books are discussed and shared in class and used as a tool to support learning and teaching.
As the children become fluent readers their understanding of the text grows through a focus on teaching comprehension skills and through developing the children’s understanding of layers of questioning. Using a variety of texts linked to our topics, the children are taught the skills they need to successfully answer these questions with precision.
To support reading comprehension the children choose an Accelerated Reader book. This book is matched to the children’s level of comprehension skill. When the children complete their book, they take an online quiz which gives them points.
‘I like Accelerated reader as it makes us want to have more points and read more. It has made us like books even more.’
‘If you read more books, you get more ideas and I learn how to use more description.’
‘I used to enjoy reading a bit, but now I love it. It’s really exciting, especially all our new books!’
Every day at 2:45pm D.E.A.R (Drop Everything And Read) time begins. We stop everything and we take the time to share a variety of books and poems.
‘DEAR time is fun because it will help you with your writing because it gives you vocabulary. I like listening to stories as well as reading alone.’
Throughout the academic year, we also enjoy visiting our local library, going to The Hive as well as joining in Worcester Universities Bee Line Festival.
Talk for Writing
Talk for Writing allows developing writers at Carnforth School to explore the creative and thinking processes in writing through talk. The talk allows the children to begin to think and talk like a writer.
Talk for writing will expose all pupils to oral storytelling. The benefits of the talk for writing approach are that the pupils will build a bank of quality vocabulary, text type, genre and narrative patterning. It will also help build confidence so that children can build their own text type including narrative, reports and instructions. The story telling approach should include imitation which involves repeating the text type, innovation where we change and develop the text type and finally independent application where we create a new text type applying the skills taught throughout the sequence. Grammatical skills are taught and woven through the writing units, this is to ensure that the children understand the purpose behind the skills being taught.
Children will be given the opportunity to demonstrate, clarify and consolidate their learning through asking and answering questions and completing a set activity. Modelled, shared and guided writing are also used as a tool for learning throughout the talk for writing sequence.
Cross-Curricular Literacy Opportunities
Teachers will seek to take advantage of opportunities to make valid cross-curricular links so that writing genres taught are meaningful. Their planning provides links with the theme they are teaching. They will also plan for pupils to practise and apply the skills, knowledge and understanding acquired through literacy lessons to other areas of the curriculum.
Spellings
Children who have completed the RWI phonics programme will progress on to the RWI spelling programme at their current level.
The spelling programme runs in daily sessions of 30 minutes, which comprise of teacher-led activities, paired work and independent activities. All units follow the same format of fun activities, together with tips explaining when each spelling pattern is likely to be used. Alongside this, there is a Spelling Log where children can record the words they find difficult to spell.
Read Write Inc.
You can find out more about Read Write Inc. by clicking here to visit their website.