English at St Matthew’s
At St Matthew’s children are taught to use their reading, writing and communication skills across
all areas of the curriculum.
Reading – We know that children who are confident readers will be confident learners, as reading impacts on so much of what the children can, and will go on to, do. We also do all that we can to encourage the children to have a love of books and literature that will, hopefully, stay with them for the rest of their lives.
Reading forms an integral part of the day’s learning at St Matthew’s, whether it is through shared reading, paired reading, modelled reading or story time. The children are expected to read at home on a daily basis to encourage good reading habits and reinforcement of skills. We use the Big Cat Reading Scheme throughout the school to support children’s progress in reading at home.
Children are taught phonics in Early Years and Key Stage 1 as part of a variety of strategies to help them read; we use ‘Read Write Inc’ to support our teaching of phonics. We also use books from a wide range of sources to ensure children have access to many different genres, authors and styles of writing.
Ms Green regularly leads Reading Workshop for parents. For ideas and suggestions to support your child’s reading at home, click here to read the Parents’ Reading Booklet for pupils in Early Years and Key Stage 1 and click here to read the Parents’ Reading Booklet for pupils in Key Stage 2.
The powerpoint for the recent Early Years and Key Stage 1 English Workshop can be found here.
Click on the links below to read the Parent Booklets that explain the end of year expectations for each year group in English (& Maths):
Nursey Parent Booklet
Reception Parent Booklet
Year 1 Parent Booklet English & Maths
Year 2 Parent Booklet English & Maths
Year 3 Parent Booklet English & Maths
Year 4 Parent Booklet English & Maths
Year 5 Parent Booklet English & Maths
Year 6 Parent Booklet English & Maths
Book Fairs – Our very successful Book Fairs, run in the Spring and Summer terms, give the children opportunities to look at and buy a range of lovely books. Competitions and dressing-up as book characters are always very popular in Book Week!
Win a Book! – In our weekly Friday Celebration Assembly, pupils who read every day and bring in their reading records to school are entered into a prize draw for a chance to win a book from a wonderful selection of novels, poems, picture story books and non-fiction books.
Handwriting – The children follow the same scheme throughout the school. All of our children really enjoy their daily practice and their presentation in their books is of a high standard! We recently had a whole school competition, including staff, with fabulous results.
Writing Club – This club is for KS2 pupils, meeting weekly to take on new challenges in writing. The children complete crosswords, play word games and develop different writing techniques.
We recently had a well-known author, Ifeoma Onyefulu, in to work with all of the classes from Nursery to Year 6; it was great fun! We know that meeting real authors has so much impact on our young writers. One of Ifeoma Onyefulu’s most famous books is ‘A is For Africa’. During her recent visit her, she met all of our pupils, telling them about her life as an author, reading them stories and running writing workshops. It was such a pleasure for the children to meet such a talented author.
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