In this section you will find information about our English Framework, Phonics, Reading and Spelling.

English at Hallfield

Below are the essentials we want for our children through our English Curriculum and alongside our broader essentials of; spiritual and moral wellbeing; creativity; communication; enquiry; sport, sportsmanship and health; geographical understanding; environmental awareness.

Reading

• Knowledge and experience of a variation of authors, writers and texts.
• The ability to find meaning in texts.
• Motivation to read for pleasure and develop tastes and opinions.
• A variety of strategies when faced with challenge in both reading and writing.

Writing

• The ability to write fluently and with interesting detail on a number of topics throughout the curriculum.

• A vivid imagination to engage the reader and enjoy writing.
• A highly developed vocabulary and an excellent knowledge of writing techniques to extend details and description.
• Well-organised and structured writing, which includes a variety of sentence structures.
• Excellent transcription skills that ensure their writing is well presented and punctuated, with accurate spelling and neat handwriting.
• A love of writing and an appreciation of its educational, cultural and entertainment values.

Spoken language

• Communicate effectively across a range of contexts and to a range of audiences
• Ask questions for clarification or to find out more
• Work confidently and effectively in groups of different sizes (in pairs, small groups, large groups and as a whole class).
• Develop their identity through their use of spoken language
• Participate constructively in conversations and debates

At Hallfield, children learn these essentials through a balance of discrete lessons (whole class reading, writing, handwriting and spelling) as well as learning and applying across the curriculum and through our Quality First Teaching approach. 

Phonics

In order to achieve our intentions for children at Hallfield, we use Twinkl Phonics as our systematic, synthetic phonics programme (SSP). It is high quality and robust in its purpose. With a clear, structured progression through the programme, it allows all of our pupils to meet or exceed the expected standard.  The Twinkl Phonics approach combines rigorous progression with engaging learning materials. Each lesson follows the 5-part structure:

Revisit – recap on previously taught sounds.
Teach – teach a new sound or word.
Practise – provide opportunities to practise saying and reading the sound through games and activities for children.
Apply – apply the new skill to read and write words, captions and sentences.

Assessment-assess children’s learning against criteria and crate an action plan

Parent workshops are held across the year to support parents and homework is given weekly around children’s phonics learning for the week. Our Reading Policy, which can be found below, outlines how this fits into our robust early reading program. As a result, Hallfield’s performance in Phonics assessments in Year 1 continues to be above the national average and we ensure that these high outcomes continue throughout their school experience in Reading and Writing.

Reading

Children in the Early Years and KS1 at Hallfield are given phonics based books to support their early decoding and application of phonic learning, which is taught daily through discrete phonics lessons and through the delivery of the whole curriculum. As they move through Key Stage 1, children are also provided with banded books that are appropriate to their age as well as their individual decoding and comprehension ability. Banded books are colour coded to reflect the level of difficulty. As they become more independent in applying their reading strategies, children can choose their own books with support from their teacher. Children access classroom book corners, the school library and our local library to help them select their reading books. We encourage our children to choose texts that are appealing to them and which continue to provide some challenge to their reading ability.

Below, you will find our Reading Policy, our framework for teaching whole class reading, books and website recommendations and other resources.

Reading for Pleasure is at the heart of Hallfield

There is a great deal of research that shows the importance of reading for pleasure for children’s learning and future learning behaviours:

Research evidence on reading for pleasure, DfE, May 2012

Reading for pleasure website

Reading for pleasure research, National Literacy Trust

Reading Record Guidance for Parents

Along with the book marks to support you reading with your child at home, here is a guide to reading records and how they should be used alongside information about reading at home.

Spelling

The curriculum sets out expected spelling patterns and words that children should be able to spell in each age group. To support this Hallfield uses the Twinkl phonics scheme in EYFS and KS1 and the spelling scheme ‘No Nonsense Spelling’ in KS2.

Children are given spelling patterns each week to learn and tested weekly on their understanding of these patterns. The understanding of the etymology (where the words have come from) and morphology (the structure of words) of words helps children to make sense of new words they encounter when reading.

Word Lists

The word-lists for Years 3 to 6 are statutory. The lists are a mixture of words children  frequently use in their writing and those which they often misspell. Some of the listed words may be thought of as quite challenging, but the 100 words in each list are taught within the four years of key stage 2. The spellings are also included in the children's home-learning lists.

The following websites have some free resources and games that your children can access to support learning their spelling patterns:

https://www.spellzone.com/pages/resources.cfm

https://www.bbc.co.uk/education/topics/zcgv39q

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks2/english/spelling_grammar/spelling/read/1/​