"Love God, love yourself, love your neighbour." Luke 10:27
ENGLISH
READING
At Bishop Bridgeman, we believe that reading is an important and vital life skill and we strive for all children to enjoy and value it. We recognise that enjoyment in reading arises from deriving meaning from text. It is our aim to develop and create passionate readers for life who are able to read confidently and fluently by the end of their primary school journey.
Guided reading takes place daily. Children are grouped according to ability; each group has at least one guided session per week with either the teacher or teaching assistant. Each child takes home a scheme book every day with a reading record. While children are learning to read through our phonics programme they will take home a decodable text which is closely matched to their phonic ability. The children share their books with an appropriate adult in school at least once a week. The adult asks questions relevant to the interest of the child and encourages predictions. In KS2 we use the strategy of reciprocal reading. The children are encouraged to decode unknown words using appropriate strategies. Children develop independence in reading through completing activities related to their guided reading book. A ‘Class Reader’ is also used to encourage children’s enjoyment of literature. This is read regularly.
At Bishop Bridgeman Church of England Primary School, reading is delivered through a wide variety of books and resources including Oxford Reading Tree, Project X, Collins and Rigby Star. These stories are carefully written using simple, natural-sounding language as well as subject matter children can be excited about and relate to. Key words are repeated throughout the storybooks so that children can gradually increase the number of words they can recognise and read. All texts are banded into a colour and are well matched to our phonics programme. Children progress through the bands as their phonic knowledge is developed until they are recognised as a free reader and will have access to books from our challenging reading materials.
We celebrate our love of reading at Bishop Bridgeman in many ways, including 'super learning days', 'book fairs' and through our whole school reading reward scheme.
WRITING
At Bishop Bridgeman, we believe that the mastery of written language is one of the most powerful gifts that we can provide to our children. We believe that writing should be purposeful, rich and enjoyable for all. Writing at Bishop Bridgeman is delivered through an exciting and engaging curriculum which is taught from Reception to Year 6. As the National Curriculum for writing sets out, children should learn about transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech and writing).
In Key Stage 1 and 2 writing is taught through the use of high quality texts and a recognised teaching sequence. Quality texts provide a stimulus for all children to develop their writing across different text types. 'Talk for writing' is used in KS1 to allow children to interact and engage with the text. Activities such as book talk, story telling, role play, drama and word and language games are an important part of the writing process. Once children have gathered ideas and planned their writing, teachers model writing to support the writing process. During and after writing, children are given an opportunity to edit and redraft their work. Whenever possible writing with a clear purpose is the priority as we find this leads to better outcomes and engagement.
The importance of legible handwriting can not be underestimated. We follow the handwriting scheme 'Pen Pals' from Cambridge University Press. This allows us to teach handwriting in a fun, interactive way. It helps the children develop a fluent, confident handwriting style. Flexible, fluent and legible handwriting allows children to write with confidence. Handwriting develops best when it is taught frequently for short periods of time which is the approach at Bishop Bridgeman. We also celebrate the quality of children’s handwriting through weekly handwriting awards.
PHONICS
At Bishop Bridgeman we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised Progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.