English

Miss Blackaby is the subject lead for English across the whole school. She shares the responsibility of reading with Mrs Beniston (early reading/phonics) and Miss Hughes (phonics intervention in KS2).

At the heart of every unit is a great work of literature, which we aim to get the children as deeply involved with as possible. This basic principle is advocated by The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE). Teachers use the CLPE’s Power of Reading resources to support the delivery of a vibrant and relevant text-based curriculum.

Not only do children develop key skills in reading comprehension through studying texts in this way, there are numerous stimulating and inspiring writing opportunities which stem from using high-quality books. 

The grammar, punctuation and spelling element of the curriculum is taught discretely and then consolidated through writing activities.  

Phonics

Phonics is a key area of the Early Years and Key Stage One curriculum at St Matthew’s Bloxam. We firmly believe that the teaching of high quality phonics underpins the core skills of both reading and writing.

Phonics is taught in small groups through a structured, fun, interactive progressive programme. The Systematic Synthetic Phonics scheme we use is Essential Letters and Sounds.  Children are taught how to segment and blend words and are also taught for both reading and writing. From an early age children use the correct terminology such as phoneme, grapheme, digraph and split digraph. Children are also taught spelling patterns and rules through phonics sessions.

For more information see Phonics