Please see our Phonics page for information on this programme we use in Early Years.

Reading

At Stanstead Flying High Academy, we believe that reading skills are important factors towards every child's success in school and their future. We want reading to be a fun and imaginative activity for children, which opens doors to all kinds of new worlds for them to explore and enjoy. In school, we provide a variety of reading opportunities in all areas of the children’s learning, in addition to reading throughout our curriculum learning, we have whole class guided reading lessons which take place daily.

In Key Stage 2, our guided reading lessons involve learning about a variety of text types which are linked to our enquiry learning.

We focus on 8 key strands in our reading lessons, these are:

1. Develop positive attitudes to reading.
2. Skills and strategies to read for understanding.
3. Understand the vocabulary used in texts.
4. Express, record and present their understanding.
5. Understand the whole text.
6. Retrieve information from texts.
7. Inferential understanding.
8. Reading to find out.

In Early years and Key Stage 1 we deliver whole class reading lessons, called Launchpad, these teach the following main themes:

1. Auditory and visual discrimination (Auditory discrimination is the ability to recognise, compare and distinguish between distinct and separate sounds)
2. Decoding
3. Prosody (Prosody involves emphasising the right words, using voice pitch and taking appropriate pauses)
4. Comprehension

Writing

At Stanstead Flying High Academy, we believe that the ability to write with independence, confidence and accuracy is an essential life skill. Writing is a complex process; it is the ability to effectively communicate ideas, information and opinions through the printed word, in a wide range of contexts. Successful writers understand the social function and characteristics of writing in order to use different genres appropriately, matching it to audience and purpose. Writing also requires the writer to understand and accurately apply the conventions of syntax, spelling and punctuation. We aim to equip children with the skills necessary to achieve this, throughout our curriculum

Our aims are for all children at Stanstead Flying High Academy are to:

• Write with confidence, clarity and imagination
• Understand and apply knowledge of phonics and spelling
• Understand how to write in a range of genres (including fiction, non-fiction and poetry), using the appropriate style, structure and features
• Understand a range of punctuation marks and use them accurately across a range of text types
• Plan, draft, revise and edit their own work, and learn how to self and peer-assess
• Develop a broad range of vocabulary and use it accurately

Writing is taught on a daily basis within English lessons. However, high expectations of writing are also held across all other curriculum lessons. So new skills taught within writing lessons can be applied within other contexts across all other lessons.

We follow the National Curriculum (2014) which ensures that a range of genres are covered, identifying those that best link into the topic, including narrative, non-fiction (e.g., persuasive texts, non-chronological reports, information texts, recounts, reports and letters) and poetry.

Teachers link the writing genre and outcome with the overarching termly enquiry question, creating an authentic purpose for writing. Genres are taught across the whole school, with clear progression and guidance outlined with the expectations for each year group to ensure children are being introduced to new skills and features every year, building on skills and previous knowledge.

Writing is taught through a carefully planned sequence of lessons which build towards the children producing an independent piece of writing where they are encouraged to showcase all of the features and skills that they have been taught throughout the unit of writing. Each unit focuses on a particular genre of writing and will incorporate a variety of the following teaching strategies.

Modelling Writing

The teacher talks aloud the thought processes as a writer. They model strategies in front of the children, communicating the strategies being used. Teachers may model writing skills such as punctuation, rehearsal, proof reading, editing, word selection, sentence construction and paragraphing.

Shared Writing

This is a collaborative approach in which the pupils contribute their ideas and thoughts for the teacher to write. The teacher models and teaches specific writing skills and there is the opportunity for discussion to choose the most effective or suitable idea.