English

Welcome to the English information page

English is at the core of our curriculum. We understand that a high-quality education in English allows children to develop their understanding, knowledge and skills in all areas of learning and provides a gateway to personal growth and effective participation in society. Taking into consideration our children’s starting point and background, we endeavour to provide children with a bespoke curriculum that allows for maximum language development. We aim to develop in our pupils the ability to communicate effectively in speech and writing and to listen with understanding. We aim to make them enthusiastic, fluent and responsive readers who can learn and gain pleasure from the written word. We encourage each child to reach their full potential, to value themselves, others and the world in which they live.

We hope you find the information useful.

If you have any suggestions or queries regarding this page please contact Miss L Parker (KS1 English Lead) or Miss R Sheth (KS2 English Lead)

We are striving to become a 'Reading School' and we want to promote reading at every turn! We want our children to have a real love and passion for reading at every age across school.
We launch several St Stephen's Reading Challenges throughout the school year to help support and promote reading at home. Alongside this you will have opportunities to attend 'Reading Come and Watch Me Learn' events in your child's class. This will give you some helpful tips on how to support your child's reading.
We have a fantastic '100 books to read before you leave St Stephens' reading area in school which all children access and enjoy. The purpose of this area is to allow children to read and enjoy a large selection and range of quality and highly recommended books on the comfort of our new sofa!
Please ensure that you are listening to your child read at home. They have a reading journal where you can comment and sign your name. For Key Stage 2 there are also suggested questions that you might ask your child to see if they have understood their reading book.
If you are available to help support reading in school please speak to your child’s class teacher. Many thanks for your support.
'Reading for Pleasure' is our BIG focus as a school and we need your support with this as much as possible!
Please encourage your child to access a huge variety of online books using the SORA app that we have recently subscribed to. Your child has been shown in school how to access this online library. Please ask your child's class teacher if they need to be reminded of their login details.
We have implemented our Spellings Scheme this year from Year 2 up to Year 6. This will ensure spelling rules are taught at appropriate stages and that progression is seamless from one year group to the next.

How can parents get involved?

Attend one of our regular workshops! (See newsletters for more information).
Enjoy a book, a comic, an online news report, a magazine with your child at home! Make it fun!
Read, read, read with your child daily!

Please find below a suggested list of books that you could read with your children for each year group. Please also note that the Blackburn central library has a fabulous range of books that the children can choose from. Do join them!

Suggested book lists

Talk for Reading

We have recently changed the way that we do guided reading in school- now we are following the Talk for Reading programme. This will give our children the opportunity to read deeper into a text thus developing their background knowledge. It enables the pupils to ask questions and encourages in-depth discussions in lessons, unpicking the texts given. It also aims to give our pupils the skills they need to be life long readers and to increase their vocabulary. There is a fluency element to 'Talk for Reading' which will help the pupils to make progress on their prosody and automaticity when reading.

The overview is as follows:

Introduction
Investigation
Independent understanding

Click on the link below for more information on the Talk 4 Reading approach:

https://www.talk4writing.com/talk-for-reading/

Talk for Writing

"Talk for Writing, developed by Pie Corbett, supported by Julia Strong, is powerful because it is based on the principles of how children learn. It is powerful because it enables children to imitate the language they need for a particular topic orally before reading and analysing it and then writing their own version."

Talk for Writing runs throughout the school from EYFS up to Year 6. Each year group has specific quality texts from a variety of genres which they use as their focus texts each half term. These texts link to their topics across the curriculum meaning that learning is relevant and vocabulary is embedded.

Children build you their confidence to perform and develop a text they come to know very well. They learn and use new vocabulary both orally and in their written work. Children are encouraged and supported to innovate each text and children in KS2 will also move on to inventing their own versions of the texts.

The programme follows these three steps for each text:

- Imitation

- Innovation

- Invention

For more information about these stages and the impact this programme has in schools please follow the link to the Talk for Writing website below:

http://www.talk4writing.co.uk/about/