Reading
Our school reading books incorporate a range of reading schemes to enable children to have a breadth of reading experiences and the opportunity to read books that interest them. Our books are split into groups following a colour band system. Children will work their way through the colour bands throughout their time in the school. We encourage parents to read with their children for 10 minutes every day in Reception and KS1, 15 minutes every day in Year 3 and 4 and 20 minutes every day in Year 5 and 6. Comments should then be recorded in the children’s reading diary. In KS1, we make sure the children are heard reading individually with a Teaching Assistant or parent volunteer on a daily basis. We have found that this support enables children to make rapid progress in reading. Throughout the rest of the school we have Guided Reading sessions each week. In these small Guided Reading Groups children read with an adult focusing on specific reading skills and strategies. We also ask parents to volunteer if they can and provide them with guidelines in how to support children in their reading.
Writing
Children at Waltham St Lawrence Primary School enjoy accessing high quality writing experiences. These writing experiences are often linked to the children’s topic and therefore are rich in purpose. We use Pie Corbett ‘Talk for Writing’. Teachers plan opportunities for children to:
- Explore and read a range of texts linked to the genre.
- Develop their speaking and listening skills, including role play, drama and presentational techniques.
- Develop a good understanding of the features of different text types.
- Experience high quality teacher modelled writing.
- Plan and complete short and extended pieces of writing.
- Evaluate, edit and improve written pieces of work.
Children will develop key word and sentence level skills through the genre that they are learning about and in cross-curricular writing. Teachers will identify areas for development for children and these will become their targets. These targets will be addressed during writing sessions. Opportunities for regular short burst writing are encouraged throughout a unit of work, enabling the children to experience writing opportunities as regularly as possible.
Some useful websites and resources to explore at home: