What Ofsted had to say about English at Montpelier...
Promoting pupils' love and enjoyment of reading is at the heart of the school's curriculum. Younger pupils learn their phonics quickly. There is a good range of books for them to choose from that match their abilities and interests. Teachers are well trained to use the school's phonics programme. This is demanding and well set out. Pupils start learning their phonics from the moment they enter school. Leaders ensure that pupils do not fall behind in their reading. As a result, pupils become confident and fluent readers.
Writing at Montpelier
Handwriting
In Foundation, children are taught standard letter formation. We use the Read, Write, Inc. resources to support our teaching. In Year One, all modelled writing becomes pre-cursive with entry and exit strokes. When children are ready, they are taught how to write in this style. In Year Two and beyond, all modelled writing is fully cursive. Children are encouraged to start joining as soon as they are ready. Children are taught handwriting explicitly and at every opportunity when they are writing. Any child, who finds any aspect of handwriting difficult, will be supported and appropriate intervention will be put in place.
Pen Licences
Children at Montpelier use a pencil to write with. Every year, children have the opportunity to ‘earn’ a pen licence. If their handwriting and spelling meets all of the expectations for their year group, then they are rewarded with a pen licence and pen! This process starts again as all children move up to the next year group.
Spelling
In Foundation, a phoneme is sent home weekly, with a suggested activity for the children to apply their learning. In KS1 and KS2, at the beginning of every term, the spellings for the whole term are sent home. As well as this, weekly reminders are sent home with fun suggestions as to how the children could learn their words. Each week’s spellings are broken down in to bronze (must learn), silver (should learn) and gold (could learn) spellings. On most occasions, children working at age-related expectations, should be learning all of the words. Spellings can be topic words, common exception words, words from the national curriculum spelling lists or words that follow a pattern or rule that the children have been learning.
Wow Writes
Every week, children in Years 1-6 complete a fun spelling activity. This assesses their ability to spell the words and spelling rules/patterns taught and sent home in the previous week. Activities include Wow Writes where children hear a bronze, silver and gold dictation containing the spellings. Children write down the sentences, demonstrating their ability to spell the words in context.
Phonics
Phonics is taught through discrete daily sessions from Foundation to Year 2. Within KS2 regular sessions are delivered where need is identified. We follow the Little Wandle letters and sound revised progression. Children are taught grapheme phoneme correspondence, phonetically decodable words and tricky words, this is supported in reading practice which applies these skills so that children make meaning from texts. Above all we want the children to enjoy developing these skills to ensure full access to the curriculum.
SPaG (Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar)
Following the National Curriculum, children are taught the relevant spelling, punctuation and grammar rules for their year group. In KS1 this takes place either in the daily English or Phonics lessons. In KS2, SPaG is taught in explicit sessions and as part of the English unit of work. As with phonics, we endeavour to make our SPaG lessons practical, multi-sensory, engaging and memorable.
Star Writers
Each class, each half term, will pick a piece of writing to be displayed on the prestigious school Star Writer board.
English Units of Work
Units of work are planned using objectives from the national curriculum. When planning a unit of work, consideration is given to what type of writing will give the children the best opportunity to demonstrate the skills they are being taught. Across each year, children will write a range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. We ensure that there is a clear purpose and audience for each unit, giving the children a real reason to write. Units of work begin with a Wow Starter to motivate the children and ensure they want to write. The next phase of a unit is immersion; children immerse themselves in quality texts and activities, which prepare them for their own writing. Following this is the experimenting phase, where children have the opportunity to practise the new skills they are taught. The final element of a unit is the independent phase. At this time, children develop their drafting and editing skills before putting everything they have learned into practice in their end of unit progress write.
Beat the Green/Purple Polishing
To encourage children to self-check, edit, and improve their own work, we use the ‘Beat the Green’ approach. Children across the school are taught how to use a variety of self-help strategies including: beat the green buddies, success criteria, word banks and WAGOLLS. Once children’s work has been discussed/marked, they can make further improvements using a purple polishing pen.
Assessment
All work is marked in accordance with the school’s marking policy. Positive elements of work, demonstrating progress towards the learning objectives are tickled pink. Work, which could be edited and improved, is marked with a green pen. These ‘greens’ are split into two categories – lazy greens (something already learnt) and learning greens (new learning). Next steps and areas to build upon are written in blue.
End of Unit writes are assessed using the SLN highlighting sheets, informing our teacher assessments. Regular moderation takes place, both internally and externally, to ensure our assessments are accurate and consistent.
Oracy at Montpelier
Our Aim
Our aim is for Montpelier to be a language rich environment, where pupils and staff use the spoken language to communicate and express themselves successfully.
Whole School Expectations
There is a whole school expectation that all members of the school community will apply good oracy principles when communicating and interacting.
Dojos
We reward good oracy, across the school, with oracy dojos. Examples of good oracy could include: speaking in full sentences, using kind words, saying good morning, disagreeing with an opposing view and justifying your reasons.
Class Talking Tips
All twenty one classes at Montpelier are in the process of creating a set of ‘Talking Tips’. These are a set of guidelines that pupils and staff follow to help them improve their oracy skills.
Opportunities for Talk
When planning, staff at Montpelier consider and create opportunities to talk. Not only are we learning to talk, we are learning through talk. We appreciate that learning, across the curriculum, can be enhanced when quality, structured talk is encouraged.
Real Life Experiences
As well as providing opportunities to talk within lessons, we work hard to provide ‘real life’ opportunities for pupils to develop their oracy skills too. Examples of this include: Foundation children visiting the local shop to spend 10p. Pupils recording our telephone answer phone messages. Pupils taking orders and serving teas and coffees during our parent helper afternoon tea.
Vocabulary
We use various strategies to develop our vocabulary at Montpelier. We pre-teach topic specific vocabulary, we collect and investigate words in SPaG, we clarify the meaning of words when we read, and we read quality texts and discuss the impact of words and phrases. We have high expectations of vocabulary when children are talking and writing.
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