At St. John's all skills from the National Curriculum 2014 will be taught as required for each year group through a wide range of genres and text types. Coverage includes fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Texts used are tailored to the needs of the children through ongoing assessment/National Curriculum expectations. We use topic based planning, taking one high quality text as a stimulus to hook the children in which allows our teachers a wider creative freedom and an enhanced opportunity to focus on the 'Reading for Pleasure' element of the curriculum. Our Literacy Curriculum is further enriched through competitions such as BBC Radio 2 Five Hundred Words, visitors to the school such as The Dogs Trust and Accelerated Reader which encourages children to reach milestones in their reading. Children are further engaged in developing their literacy skills through other topics such as science, geography and history. 

Reading Scheme

Here at St John's we teach phonics using the Letters and Sounds Programme, supported by the use of the Jolly Phonics Kinaesthetic stories and actions. Graphemes are also introduced using the Espresso phonic video clips. 

 

As children move through the early stages of acquiring phonics they practice by reading texts in their guided reading sessions which are entirely decodable. The texts used are from the Rigby Star Phonics / Phonics Bug series of books. Once children have a secure knowledge of letters/sound correspondences and can decode and blend words with confidence they will access books from the Cambridge Reading scheme.

 

 

Monday 20th November 2017

On Monday ,all classes had a master class in poetry writing delivered by 'The Poet from the Peaks' Andy Tooze. The children were thoroughly enthused and desperate to write their own poems. What an inspiration! Our special thanks go to Mr Ahmad for his kind donation that enabled us to arrange this visit from a professional author.