English

Reading is a skill which underpins all areas of learning and so it is our intent that all children will leave our care as confident, fluent and independent readers. Through reading, our children will be prepared for future study and later life so they can be confident, successful and fulfilled. Through reading our pupils will be revitalised to see themselves as successful learners and be independent in accessing future opportunities.

Phonics and early reading skills are taught comprehensively through the Read Write Inc Phonics programme. This applies to all pupils in our Tate gallery and those who need it in our Louvre gallery. Pupils who need extra support in our Moma gallery access 1:1 reading tutoring and small group sessions through Read Write Inc Fresh Start. Once the children are confident of the initial sounds, they are taught to segment and blend the letters in words in order to decode (read and to encode/ write). The children are regularly assessed where they are grouped according to their rate of progress but taught within their known classroom teams. During their phonics lessons, as well as revising and learning new phonic sounds, the children will apply and develop their phonic and reading skills having access to RWI reading books that support their developing skills.

Alongside developing reading skill, we also understand the importance of developing reading will. We strive to give our children a real sense of ‘reading for pleasure’ by making our learning environments rich in language and vocabulary. It is our intent that our learners will develop a lifelong love of reading and become as passionate about reading as their teachers are. Through the specific teaching of reading skills, we support children’s reading journeys so that they can decode, understand and discuss texts fully. Reading is taught during English sessions through access to core texts rich in language and vocabulary. There is also daily 1:1 reading as well as a shared ‘Drop everything and read session’ (DEAR) and a weekly text focused English lesson focusing on the important skills of comprehension, inference and developing a greater understanding of the role of the author and their voice. Our ‘DEAR’ texts are inspired by our school values and seek to bring a range of texts to broaden pupils’ experiences and understanding. Our love of reading as an academy is also explored through our cross curricular driven topics in science, history, geography, R.E. and arts lessons. We are also developing our school library which supports learners to contextualise knowledge and deepen their understanding of progressively more complex ideas linked to history, society and their everyday life by accessing a variety of multicultural and inclusive texts.

Our expectation is that our children will read a range of phonic books, both fiction and non-fiction. Post phonics, students will read an increasingly wide range of fiction, non fiction, and poetry texts daily. The children are encouraged to develop the ability to read at speed, with fluency and expression, and to read like a ‘storyteller’. They also discuss many aspects of the book in order to answer comprehension questions verbally. The content of which becomes gradually more complex as students progress through the school. There are many opportunities to talk out loud and incorporate these ideas in writing tasks. We also have weekly opportunities for cross curricular reading and writing where children are encouraged to use and apply their learning in meaningful and real life context driven ways.

For World Book Day staff recorded themselves reading children’s books aloud. You can watch these videos here: World Book Day

All of our pupils are baseline assessed at the start of each academic year, and on entry to our academy. This process includes a reading age assessment, a phonics assessment and a reading comprehension assessment. Once the progression and pathway for a pupil is identified they continue a regular cycle of reassessment and adjustment relative to their academic package.

• Phonics Pathway: Pupils on a phonics pathway undertake regular assessments in line with RWI guidelines (Tate/Louvre Gallery).

• Post Phonics Pathway: Pupils who have completed this pathway undertake assessment predominantly via the NHA Learning Steps, and also develop their reading via group reading comprehension sessions and RWI Spelling (Louvre/Moma Gallery). English Progression of Skills Example.

• SATS Pathway: In addition to the Post Phonics Provision, pupils who are working within a SATS pathway also undertake additional support for reading comprehension, inference and developing stamina for learning, alongside developing the resilience to understand how to manage their own social, emotional and mental health needs in assessment periods and examination conditions (Moma Gallery).

Being a confident and fluent writer is an important part of being a confident and successful adult. We want our pupils to leave our academy having achieved their best possible outcomes, so that when they start their journey into adulthood they do so with the best tools at their disposal. We understand the journey that many of our pupils have been on prior to their arrival at our academy and our English Writing curriculum is carefully designed to gradually build challenges into our pupils academic profiles, while supporting and allowing their social, emotional and mental health needs to be met. We start this process by pairing our writing curriculum with our reading approach in our youngest classes, carefully linking our RWI phonics work with the writing process. Daily handwriting sessions help support our youngest pupils and those on similar academic pathways to learn the mechanics of writing, to build stamina for learning and to start to see themselves as successful learners. We embed a rich cultural capital and engagement programme with visits from authors and events that celebrate the joy and passion of writing, from world book day to national poetry day.

Pupils in all galleries have access to three weekly hour long English sessions driven by texts and rich in cross curricular learning opportunities to help embed and provide real life learning context to the theory and practice of Writing.. There is also the opportunity, through our two year rolling plan, to explore texts from other cultures, times and places, as well as writing for a range of different purposes. We encourage our pupils to celebrate their learning by supporting them to view their writing projects as a cycle of planning, writing, editing and celebration, with each pupil producing ‘showcase’ learning at the end of each lesson series. We also understand the vital importance of spoken language and how this is intricately woven into the development of reading and writing. We provide lots of opportunities for talk and the development of vocabulary linking to our thematic two year rolling plan. Such opportunities include whole class debates, hot seating and drama. Within our Wider Curriculum Offer school council meetings, structured social development and social, emotional interventions provide additional opportunities for our pupils to apply their developing language.

Within English, we assess our pupils’ progress through our Termly Learning Outcomes (TLOs) and Northern House Academy Learning Steps. We use the Northern House Academy Learning Steps to help us create bespoke success criteria for pupils and ensure that we link TLOs to EHCP Outcomes where possible. This allows us to track the smaller, incremental steps of progress for a child. This is then cross referenced with National Curriculum Age Related Expectations to determine a pupils’ bespoke learning priorities within a specific strand of learning, as well as provide us with a nationally recognised attainment level. These targets are then contained within a lesson series plan. Our lesson series run termly. As such, a TLO, comprising numerous Success Criteria, for a pupil is tracked and assessed across a term. Students are assessed in each lesson and the amount of support they receive in the session is recorded on a planning and assessment document, along with any other noteworthy information. This process of ongoing teacher assessment is underpinned and informed by standardised assessments across the year. In English, the Salford Reading Age and PIRA Comprehension tests are completed 3 times per year, in line with our assessment cycle. We also ensure that our teacher assessments are validated through internal moderation processes with pupils completing three ‘stand alone’ writing assessments across the academic year, which are then moderated. Tracking student progress in this multi-tiered way ensures that we always maintain an up to date understanding of student progress and consequently are able to accurately pitch learning at all times.