English
Our Landewednack English curriculum follows the National Curriculum and is enriched through opportunities for poetry recitation, talk for writing, reading for pleasure and cross-curricular reading and writing. Each class has a daily Literacy lesson with further opportunities to develop reading, writing and spoken language skills throughout the day. Spelling and handwriting skills are developed through frequent practise. We attach great importance to the spoken word and the ability to listen and are further developing our oracy planning with the Kernow Talks Oracy Project. Children learn to write for a variety of purposes; have the chance to explore a range of high quality texts and are encouraged to take books home to enjoy and share.
The Write Stuff
We use The Write Stuff approach to teaching writing.
Ever year the children in Years 1-6 have a 1 hour "Write Stuff" lesson, in which they learn to write using different "lenses" from the Writing Rainbow.
The Fantastics are introduced in Reception through the "Fantastic Foundations" approach.
The children have the opportunity to write independently across a range of genres
Landewednack School Reading Spine
Children in Early Years and Key Stage 1 will read a range of carefully selected, high quality texts from the Read Write Inc Phonics programme. These texts are carefully matched to the children’s knowledge of phonics and include questions to develop children’s reading comprehension skills, as well as providing daily opportunities for children to improve their fluency. When children have completed the Read Write Inc programme in Year 2, they complete the Read Write Inc comprehension programme to further develop their reading skills. In addition to this, children become familiar with a range of texts through daily story time, The Write Stuff English lessons, and independent reading time. Once the Read Write Inc programme is completed, reading is developed during taught reading, using high quality texts and focused skill teaching
From Key Stage 2 , our reading spine ensures that children read a range of high quality texts, which gives them experience of five types of texts that children should have access to in order to successfully navigate reading with confidence (Lemov, Driggs and Woolway, 2016), known as “The 5 plagues of reading”:
Archaic Language
The vocabulary, usage, syntax and context for cultural reference of texts over 50 or 100 years old are vastly different and typically more complex than texts written today. Students need to be exposed to and develop proficiency with antiquated forms of expression to be able to hope to read James Madison, Frederick Douglass and other classic works in future.
Non-Linear Time Sequences
In passages written exclusively for students—or more specifically for student assessments— time tends to unfold with consistency. A story is narrated in a given style with a given cadence and that cadence endures and remains consistent, but in the best books, books where every aspect of the narration is nuanced to create an exact image, time moves in fits and starts. It doubles back. The only way to master such books is to have read them time and again and to be carefully introduced to them by a thoughtful teacher or parent.
Narratively Complex
Books are sometimes narrated by an unreliable narrator- Scout, for example, who doesn’t understand and misperceives some of what happened to her. Or the narrator in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” who is a madman out of touch with reality. Other books have multiple narrators such as Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. Others have non-human narrators such as the horse that tells the story in Black Beauty. Some books have multiple intertwined and apparently (for a time) unrelated plot lines. These are far harder to read than books with a single plot line and students need to experience these as well.
Figurative/Symbolic Text
Texts which happen on an allegorical or symbolic level. Not reflected in Lexiles; critical forms of text complexity that students must experience.
Resistant Texts
Texts written to deliberately resist easy meaning-making by readers. Perhaps half of the poems ever written fall into this category. You have to assemble meaning around nuances, hints, uncertainties and clues.
This is based on work by Doug Lemov. These texts are complex beyond a lexical level and demand more from the reader than other types of books. We ensure that children experience reading from at least one text of each of these types each year. The types reflect different types of complexity, which children need to become familiar with to understand complex texts throughout their lives. Additionally, we have carefully considered the lexical level of the texts and the different reading skills that each text will provide opportunities to develop.
