Teacher responsible for English: Mrs J Daniels

Link Governor for English: Mrs C Preston

Phonics and Early Reading

At Rosliston CE Primary School, we use All Aboard Phonics, a Department for Education validated scheme.

We are immensely proud to be an All Aboard Phonics Hub School!

This means we are 'Outstanding phonics practitioners...delivering high-quality phonics teaching and intervention'.

All Aboard Phonics is a systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) resource, designed to make teaching phonics easier, more fun and consistently successful by using:

1. A fully tested curriculum based on Letters and Sounds methodology
2. Unique intervention processes to boost confidence and results
3. New technology, to make life easier and sessions more engaging for children

All Aboard resources are research-based, to maximise the outcomes for our pupils. 

We have a full set of decodable, early reading books, which link to our phonics scheme, using the same sounds, imagery and characters. This systematic and consistent approach means our pupils learn phonics in a progressive and long-lasting way. 

All Aboard is a bright, visual scheme, with fantastic classroom resources, games and intervention material! 

English

As well as equipping our younger children with strong phonological understanding, we follow the Literacy Shed VIPERS for the teaching of literacy. VIPERS provide our pupils with vital reading, comprehension and inference skills to allow them to have a deeper understanding of what they're reading. We teach English through high-quality, varied texts which often link to our termly topic. By exposing our pupils to a range of quality reading material, we allow them to become fluent, confident readers, whilst helping them develop a curious and genuine love of reading for pleasure. 

What are Vipers?

VIPERS is an acronym to aid the recall of the 6 reading domains as part of the UK’s reading curriculum.  They are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts.

VIPERS stands for

Vocabulary

Inference

Prediction

Explanation

Retrieval

Sequence (KS1) or Summarise (KS2)

The 6 domains focus on the comprehension aspect of reading and not the mechanics: decoding, fluency, prosody etc.  As such, VIPERS is not a reading scheme but rather a method of ensuring that teachers ask, and students are familiar with, a range of questions.  

We use reading assessments in school, to assess and monitor our pupils' reading progress. These assessments test children's comprehension and highlight areas of strength and potential development points. From the detailed analysis teachers carry-out, we then plan and deliver targeted intervention in a timely manner. This has proved incredibly successful for our pupils, with all of our current KS2 cohort experiencing rapid, accelerated progress in their reading ability.

Spelling

As well as the All Aboard Phonics scheme and VIPERS for reading, we use The Literacy Shed: Spelling Shed for Key Stage 2 spelling lessons. This scheme has the appropriate, curriculum spelling lists for each year group and fun activities to complete both in class and at home. 

Writing

We follow the 'Writing Sequence' approach in Writing. We expose our pupils to well-written examples of the text type we're aiming to write ('What a good one looks like' or WAGOLL), give them input and opportunity to gather information and material for their piece, scaffold their planning, draft the piece, write it and then edit and improve. As the children grow in confidence, we reduce the amount of scaffolding to encourage the children to write their own pieces independently with careful consideration, using the tools they're equipped with through quality literacy teaching, covering areas of the Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling curriculum (SPaG). 

Our early writers, in EYFS (Reception) and Key Stage 1 love taking part in their daily Drawing Club sessions! They use codes and drawings to learn to write independently, inspired by books, films, music and much more. Miss Twells and the Beavers team really do bring writing to life and our children are enthusiastic and keen to impress with their skills. 

Drawing Club founder, Greg Bottrill says: 

"Drawing Club is a true adventure and perfect for Reception and Year 1, though it can be adapted for Nursery and even as intervention in KS2. Based around the Golden Blend of picture books, tales and animations, it involves a short period of Time Together as a whole class followed by time with children exploring their ideas and creativity that can be adapted to how you believe is best.

Drawing Club puts you, the creative teacher, back at the centre of your teaching - no scheme, no syllabus, no set texts, but freedom to adventure with the concept and bring yourself and the world of story to life.
 

• Immerse children in the world of story and show them the joy of who you are 
• Share a treasure trove of vocabulary with children to open up the playground of language to them
• Give yourself the opportunity to create a library of progress that can be astonishing
• Develop children’s creativity and imagination to show them that they are extraordinary 
• Give your children age-appropriate practice that is highly engaging and grounds children in the joy of book snuggling."