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English
Our Intent:
English has a pre-eminent place in education and in society. A high-quality education in English will teach pupils to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them. Through reading in particular, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development. Reading also enables pupils both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know. All the skills of language are essential to participating fully as a member of society; pupils, therefore, who do not learn to speak, read and write fluently and confidently are effectively disenfranchised.
It is our intention, to secure the necessary reading, writing and linguistic skills to become enthusiastic and independent learners. We strive to ensure all our children receive a sequential learning experience, which will equip them with the essential tools to achieve within Gossey lane and beyond. As influential gatekeepers of literature, it is our intention to immerse children in the wonders of quality texts, to foster a love for reading, a passion for discovery and the confidence to explore the world.
English underpins the work undertaken in all other areas of the curriculum and is a prerequisite for educational and social progress. Through reading a wide range of quality texts and having meaningful discussions, we aim to create valuable, contributing members of society. The acquisition of language skills is of the utmost importance and therefore the teaching of all aspects is given a high priority within school. Consequently, we strive to cultivate a community of students who have a strong command for the spoken and written word, which in turn enables them to communicate creatively and imaginatively within their compositional outcomes. Our vision is to ensure that every child achieves their full potential in all aspects of English to become confident readers, writers and communicators.
Please click here to view our English Gallery
Talk 4 Writing
We are proud to be able to say that Talk 4 Writing is embedded within KS1 and KS2. We strongly believe that children need to be able to orally rehearse and perform before writing.
"Talk for Writing is an engaging teaching framework developed by Pie Corbett, supported by Julia Strong. It is powerful because it is based on the principles of how children learn. It enables children to imitate the language they need for a particular topic orally, before reading and analysing it, and then writing their own version."
Talk for Writing is powerful because it enables children to imitate the language they need for a particular topic orally before reading and analysing it and then writing their own version. It build on three stages of teaching:
1) Imitation - the children learn a text and the language they need
2) Innovation - the children adapt the model text with ideas of their own
3) Invention - the children create their own text using the language and skills that the model taught them.
Year 1 Medium Term Plan Year 2 Medium Term Plan Year 3 Medium Term Plan Year 4 Medium Term Plan Year 5 Medium Term Plan Year 6 Medium Term Plan
Progression in Writing EYFS- Year 6
Reading
Our Vision for Reading at Gossey Lane Academy is to strive to ensure all children are fluent for understanding, enthusiastic and competent readers when they leave our school. We hope that we can instil a lifelong love of reading in our community. Our vision is clear, we have an unerring focus on reading as we know and understand the importance of being able to read across our curriculum and as a lifelong skill. We have developed our reading curriculum with a number of factors in mind:
- To aim that all children are fluent, competent readers when they leave Gossey Lane
- To ensure that we have progression for children across year groups
- That children read and are exposed to quality texts throughout their primary education
- To ensure that teachers have a clear and robust reading framework that enhances their curriculum planning, teaching and learning.
As the children progress, they are encouraged to widen their use of books for information, developing the specific skills of locating information, skimming, scanning and note taking.
In EYFS and KS1 children are taught reading through a daily synthetic phonics programme. To find out more about our phonics programme click the link below.
https://gosseylane.academy/32/subject-information/subject/14/phonics
As children come off the phonics programme in Year 2, the children are taught the next stage of our phonics programme "Comprehension". This is to support the children through their transition from phonics to whole class reading lessons.
Once they complete the comprehension programme in the Summer term, the children in Year 2 move to whole class reading. In this approach, the reading content domains are used to ensure that children are being questioned in a variety of ways, based on the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum. These are used to ensure that children understand the information they have been taught. We teach a range of reading skills through a variety of roles in The Gossey Lane Model: meaning of words, find explain and record, sequence and summarise, inference, prediction, cohesion, choice of words and comparison.
Reading the Gossey Way
Reading Medium Term Plans-2024-2025
Year 1 Overview Year 2 Overview Year 3 Overview Year 4 Overview Year 5 Overview Year 6 Overview
Gossey Lane Progression of Oracy and Reading skills (EYFS- Year 6)
Check out our fiction books below
Please see below our non-fiction books below:
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Year 4
Year 5
Year 6
Please see our Poetry Spine and Guidance below:
Handwriting
With the changes in the curriculum, greater emphasise has now been placed on presentation, the formation of letters and joined handwriting. Where as previously this skill would not have been as important as others, all skills within Writing have equal weighting. At Gossey we use the 'Letter Join' handwriting scheme. This is a great resource for the children to use to practise these skills. Not only can they practise on their tablets, but there is also the option to print out extra resources so they can work on paper.
Children at Gossey are expected to join their descending letters and to use lead-in lines. An example can be found below:
Spelling
Spelling builds upon the phonics which children are taught in KS1. From year 2-6 children at Gossey Lane, learn to develop their spelling skills using the Read, Write, Inc. Spelling scheme.
Children focus on one spelling pattern, or rule, for a number of sessions and develop their confidence and understanding of the words along the way. Each unit follows the same pattern, allowing the children to focus solely on learning and understanding the spellings rather than learn how to do new activities.
They will not bring home a generic list of spellings to learn each week for a spelling test as research has shown this in not an effective way to embed spelling knowledge. Instead, they will identify their own words to log and learn weekly and have opportunities to test their growing spelling abilities in every lesson.
How are children assessed?
Half-termly practice tests assess children’s spelling progress using the same format as the statutory assessments in England. Online tracking spreadsheets enable us to record and track individual children’s progress and identify units or concepts pupils might need to be retaught.
During the teaching activities each week, a number of assessment opportunities are also planned into the programme. The emphasis is on the importance of learning to spell, rather than being tested on spelling.
Extra Practice Zone
This booklet shows you how you can help your child to practise and consolidate their spelling by using the Extra Practice Zone.
Statutory Spelling Lists
The children are taught the words from the statutory list from the National Curriculum. These are called orange words in RWI Spelling. The word-lists for years 3 and 4 and years 5 and 6 are a mixture of words pupils 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 can easily be taught within the four years of key stage 2 alongside other words that teachers consider appropriate.
Spelling Activities
These activities include dictation, ‘four-in-a-row’ (working with a partner to spell four given words correctly in a row) and ‘dots and dashes’ (identifying the graphemes in words).They also include exercises such as Team Teach, where children test their spelling in small groups; Red and Orange words, which involves revising high-frequency words from the statutory word-lists that are often misspelt; and Special Focus sessions, which tackle topics such as homophones and contractions, which often lead to confusion.
