English
We believe talk is very important at Sexton’s Manor Community Primary School because it underpins the development of reading and writing. We use features of Talk for Writing developed by Pie Corbett. This enables children to prepare what they want to say orally with their talk partner before writing. We spend a lot of time encouraging the children to think and come up with their own ideas.
At Sexton’s Manor School we strongly believe in writing for a purpose. Much of our writing is linked to our ‘Mantle of the Expert’ topic. Children will experience writing in range of genres such as report writing, poetry, instructions or stories and sometimes use text maps (pictures and actions) to help them organise what they want to say.
We use 'Rainbow Writing' to help children generate words and phrases to help them expand their vocabulary. Each class has a rainbow displayed which has a colour code for connectives, adjective, verbs, prepositions and punctuation. Children use this to help them to remember to include interesting vocabulary in their writing and the correct punctuation.
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Children read in a guided reading group at least twice a week, although all children will be reading daily in different lessons. In their groups children develop their competence in word reading and comprehension in both fiction and non-fiction. We use a variety of reading scheme books including Oxford Reading Tree, Rigby Star and Collins Phonics. Library books are changed weekly.
Click on the link to find great ideas for new books for children to read at home:
https://www.booktrust.org.uk/books-and-reading/our-recommendations/great-books-guide/
Children have regular lessons on grammar, punctuation and spelling.
Phonics
Every day we have daily phonics sessions across Foundation Stage and Key Stage One. We follow the document 'Letters and Sounds'. and use 'Jolly phonics' to teach the children their sounds. We aim to teach phonics alongside writing and encourage the children to read and write sounds they hear.
Click below to see all the 'Jolly phonics' sounds.
Jolly Phonics action booklet pdf
Click belows to hear the sounds in songs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCjJYB07aSU
Here are some more useful websites that could help you and your child to continue to learn phonics at home.
http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/FindBook click on ‘Library’ to access free e-stories and click on ‘Story teller videos’ to hear stories being told.
http://www.letters-and-sounds.com for a range of phonics games
http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/InteractiveResources.htm for a range of word games.
http://www.mrthorne.com/ Geraldine the Giraffe videos for teaching the initial letter sounds.