At Alver Valley Schools, reading brings the world into our pupils’ classrooms. We fundamentally believe that every child is capable of becoming a fluent, confident and enthusiastic reader. Our children use books as portals into places, lives and times different from their own and as tools to expand their minds and develop their own identities. To put it simply: we love reading!

English Vision Statement:

Our aim at Alver Valley Schools is to enable children to become confident readers and writers who communicate their ideas clearly and fluently. Through high-quality texts and first-hand experiences, we strive to inspire our children’s motivation, creativity and purpose within English lessons.

Reading

At Alver Valley Schools, we fundamentally believe all children can learn to read and read to learn by the end of Year 6. In order for children to achieve this, we promote all aspects of reading – decoding, fluency, comprehension and reading for pleasure. During our 30-minute daily reading time, children have the opportunity to read from our extensive collection of library, free reader and banded books. Furthermore, they actively listen to, read and engage with a range of heritage and modern class reader texts, selected carefully from our challenging, diverse and exciting English curriculum. Teachers utilise this time to hear children read at least once a week, offering them invaluable opportunities to improve their reading fluency, speed and vocabulary. These books are matched precisely to each child’s reading level and children are assessed regularly for both reading speed and prosody. In addition, pupils study a wide range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts in Reading and Writing lessons, furthering their comprehension skills and fostering a motivation to read.

Reading schemes

In Reception and Key Stage 1, we use a range of published schemes so that children read phonetically decodable books matched to their phonic knowledge. These schemes include: Anima Phonics, Big Cat Phonics, Floppy Phonics. All of these early reading books are colour banded, so that children read books in school, and at home, which are pitched at the correct level for them. In addition to our reading schemes, online resources such as Collins Connect and Oxford Owls are used to develop children’s reading further. In Key Stage 2, we use Oxford and Collins books to develop children’s fluency in reading further, with all children being provided with a reading book matched against a numbered book band.

Phonics

To find out more about our approach to teaching phonics click here.

School library

From Nursery onward, pupils also have a weekly school library visit and continue to take home books to share with their parents alongside their reading book. Our school librarian is on hand to inspire, guide and advise pupils on book choices. Our librarian is also very happy to speak to parents who want to support their child in widening their reading choices. Visit our school library page here.

 

Writing

We endeavour for all of our children to be able to write with fluency, accuracy and confidence for a range of purposes. Our English learning journeys immerse children in rich vocabulary at every stage, taken from challenging texts and aspirational models. We utilise drama and role-play to gather children’s ideas and ignite excitement in their writing, in addition to developing their speaking and listening skills. We recognise the importance of fluency, legibility and consistency in children’s handwriting and we have implemented the Kinetic Letters approach in order to secure this crucial aspect of writing. Our pupils learn the fundamental grammar, punctuation and sentence components of English in a progressive and sequential manner and teachers carefully integrate these within engaging written contexts. Children’s proficiency in spelling is developed in a variety of contexts, with multiple opportunities provided for rehearsal and application. Teachers use a range of approaches to improve pupils’ proofreading, editing and evaluating skills, encouraging children to publish and share their writing with a variety of audiences.

Speaking and Listening

Children at Alver Valley are presented with a range of opportunities to develop their speaking and listening skills across our core and wider curriculum. Philosophy for Children (P4C) is interwoven across English, Religious Education and History lessons, where children discuss and debate important issues regularly. Our pupils practise speaking for a variety of purposes and audiences, whether this is through enriching drama activities in English, or presentations in History. Furthermore, teachers intentionally develop pupils’ confidence in using their speaking and listening skills, including their intonation, tone, pacing and volume, as well as their understanding of their audience.

Hooks into Books

Hooks into Books describes the curriculum planning approach created by the Alver Valley Early Years Team in 2019. The curriculum design is centered around books. Hooks are created to introduce the key texts to bring them to life. The approach has had the impact of instilling a love of stories to children in our Nursery and Reception classes with children choosing telling the stories, reading and rereading along with acting them out and taking them into their play. This approach in introducing and bringing books to life is now being shared in other year groups. Read more about the approach in the following articles: Hooks into Books and Hooks into Books: Year R Meet the Gingerbread Man.