Information for parents Reading and Writing KS1 Information for parents

READING In ks1

Whole Class Reading Sessions During whole-class reading sessions, children focus on a particular piece of text. This maybe an extract, a full story, non-fiction or poetry. Each session focuses on teaching a specific reading skill. We use Cracking Comprehension to practise our comprehension skills. There will be a class texts that we read together for enjoyment throughout the year.

Guided Reading In Guided reading, your child will be placed within a book band appropriate to their level. Your child will read within a small group (anywhere between 2 and 6 children.) Guided reading sessions take place once a week. Within guided reading sessions the children are actively taught reading skills to move them onto the next level. They are questioned about the text in a variety of ways; inferential questions, retrieval questions, vocabulary questions and explanation questions. If your child requires it, they will read with an adult in addition to these guided reading sessions. Within each book band there are certain objectives that your child must meet before moving on. These are not just phonetic objectives, they could be for example: comprehension, character understanding etc. As soon as your child is ready to move up a band we will move them. Our groupings are very fluid.

What do good readers do? Make a picture in our heads using the text. Stop if we don’t understand a word/phrase and work out what it means. Use clues in the text to infer meaning.

What do good readers do? We attempt to ask ourselves questions about the text. We try to make links with other stories we have read. We try to predict what may happen next. We try to summarise what we have just read.

What you can do to help Please read with your child as often as possible Please comment and sign their reading record and return these to school daily-We have different incentives in each class for those who are reading at home Please use the questions as examples of the things you could be asking your child after they have read Try to make the reading as enjoyable as possible – don’t just use the school reading book – read from everywhere; comics, magazines, newspaper, the internet, children’s own choice (they are now independent readers!)

Reading at other times We try to instil an enjoyment and pleasure for reading Also, we teach that it is the key to independent learning – how else can they research the internet for a topic if they can’t quickly independently read. We have a class library and a school library Encourage reading of any material type; comics, newspapers, magazines, ICT… We have a Literacy Spine throughout the school – Familiar authors

PHONICS In ks1

Phonics in reading Children are divided into phonics groups according to which phase they are working within. Phonics takes place daily. We expect children to apply their phonics knowledge during any reading sessions. There will be additional phonics meetings for Year 1 parents later in the year.

Phonics in Writing We expect children to apply their phonics during all writing and we supply ‘phonics mats’ to support this. Please do not discourage your child from spelling something phonetically e.g. foatoa. However we do encourage the correct spelling of key words (as aforementioned). Do not get bogged down by the different ways of spelling a sound e.g. er / ir / ur. It is more important that they are ‘having a go’ at this stage.

WRITING In ks1

Writing Genres Story Writing – longer stories, mystery and suspense stories Instructional Writing Explanations Report writing – Chronological and Non-Chronological Biography and Autobiography Recounts Journalistic Writing and diaries Poems – personification and powerful imagery Letters – Formal and informal

Writing Process When we write we try to ensure that it has a purpose. We make sure that the writing has a context and that it has an audience. The writing process involve studying the text type (lots of examples) – building up a success criteria; what language the text uses, connectives, punctuation, nouns (pronouns and proper nouns), the tense, the structure and organisation The text type is then modelled for the children as a whole text or part Planning the text – what will it look like and what will I include? This success criteria and modelling is then applied to the child’s independent writing

Spelling and Grammar The children in Year 6 will be sitting a Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling test. These are taught as part of the English sessions but also discretely during grammar and spelling. Children complete Grammar Hammer challenges on a regular basis. Children learn a new spelling pattern each week and receive weekly spellings to learn.

What you can do to help Help your child to learn their spellings - - Concentrating on the spelling patterns Point out use of punctuation and grammar during their reading time

Handwriting In KS1 we focus on correct letter formation and size, starting letters on the line and sitting them on the lines. We also focus on developing motor skills, posture and holding our pencil correctly in order to start joining our letters. Many children find this tricky to start with and children often go though a ‘messy’ phase as they experiment. Please do not worry, as it will sort itself out. We use pre-cursive style of handwriting to teach letter formation: