Our English offer

At Sawtry Infant School, we aim for children to:

• Develop a positive attitude and enthusiasm for English learning;
• Express themselves clearly and confidently;
• Become independent and fluent readers;
• To write for different purposes;
• To take pride in their work.

English teaching and learning is delivered daily and across the week. We provide:

• Four direct English lessons which explore key texts; children learn new vocabulary and apply this to their independent writing (see ‘English lessons & Writing’ below);
• A daily direct Phonics session, delivered using Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised (see ‘Phonics & Reading Practice’ below);
• Reading Practice sessions three times a week, enhanced with using matched decodable texts;
• A daily story time using a recommended year group text;
• Daily handwriting lessons. 

If you wish to read further information and find support with Phonics and Early Reading, please visit our dedicated page here. 

Writing

Our writing approach follows a three phased cycle which explores a key text in depth. At each phase, children are taught the skills they will need to independently write at the end of the cycle.

Phase 1 - Children are introduced to the focus text. Writing lesson time is then used to take part in speaking and listening activities, drama, debate and role play to bring the focus text to life.

Phase 2 - Children explore or revisit SPaG skills (spelling, punctuation and grammar) that they will need to use in their independent writing correctly. They key text is used as an example of how to apply these skills to writing.

Phase 3 - We then use this learning to begin to plan, draft, write and revise a piece of independent writing based on the key text.

We also follow Grammarsaurus to support the teaching and learning of grammar and punctuation. 

Working at Greater Depth 

Year 1 children working at Greater Depth in writing will, after discussion with the teacher, be able to:

• begin to write effectively and coherently for different purposes
• join words and clauses with a variety of commonly used conjunctions (e.g. and, but, because)
• use capital letters and full stops mostly correctly
• spell most Y1 common exception words accurately and make phonically plausible attempts at spelling unfamiliar words
• form most letters correctly.

Year 2 children working at Greater Depth in writing will, after discussion with the teacher, be able to:

• write effectively and coherently for different purposes, drawing on their reading to inform the vocabulary and grammar of their writing
• make simple additions, revisions and proof-reading corrections to their writing
• use the punctuation taught at key stage 1 mostly correctly
• spell most common exception words
• add suffixes to spell most words correctly in their writing (e.g. –ment, –ness, –ful, –less, – ly)
• use the diagonal and horizontal strokes needed to join some letters

Handwriting

Our handwriting lessons also follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme. We address any incorrect letter formation through our next steps marking. Throughout English lessons, we embed good handwriting habits, such as learning good posture for handwriting, where to start and end each letter and how letters sit on the line correctly. We use the ‘formation phrases’ as provided by Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. Please see these below.

Assessing English learning

• Evidence of children's work (such as writing across the curriculum) and teacher's knowledge of the children, enable teachers to input termly assessments of children's Reading and Writing. 
• For Phonics, in each year group, there is a review session which recaps and revisits previously taught learning. There are also whole review weeks; these are pre-planned and bespoke review weeks to address gaps in children’s knowledge.
• Children who are identified as in danger of falling behind in Phonics are immediately identified and daily ‘keep up’ sessions are put in place – these sessions follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme.
• In Reception and Year 1, children are assessed at the end of every half term using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessment tracker. This also gives teachers guidance on the appropriate book level to allocate to individual children.
• Year 1 children complete the statutory Phonics Screening Check in the Summer term. Year 2 children who did not meet the expected standard in the Phonics Screening Check in Year will retake this in Year 2. The result of these scores are reported to parents in their child’s end of school year report.