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Reading
At Cheam Park Farm, we acknowledge that inspiring a love of literacy in our pupils is important, so they fall in love with reading for life. We value reading as a vital life skill. We believe in developing a rich reading culture, by creating welcoming book areas and raising the profile of reading through a print-rich environment, attractive book displays and promoting the written word at all times.
We are committed to providing opportunities for all pupils to gain an enjoyment of reading and achieve the key early reading and comprehension skills needed to become a proficient reader. We endeavour to ensure that our children develop a positive and enthusiastic attitude towards reading that will stay with them forever through high quality texts from different genres.
Children have frequent, regular and sustained opportunities to read and to talk together about the books that they are reading individually, in small groups and as a whole class. This helps the children to reach a shared understanding and build on their cultural literacy. We plan opportunities for all children to extend their vocabulary through a range of genres and subject related texts to consolidate their understanding.
During whole class discrete Reading lessons in KS2, children explore a range of texts in more detail to develop their comprehension. They are taught a range of different reading skills such as retrieval, inference and prediction and practise applying those skills to a range of texts throughout the year. Children in KS2 learn how to provide evidence to justify their answers as well as analyse the language choices that an author has used.
In order to answer a retrieve question, children should be able to find the answer within the text.
For the interpret questions, children will need to find some evidence in the text but then use their own knowledge to understand what this means.
Try using some of these questions to support your child’s reading at home:
Retrieve
Can you find information in the text? What does this word mean? (using dictionary)
Interpret
How are the characters feeling? What did they do or say that? What might happen next?
Writing
At Cheam Park Farm, we nurture a love for writing and equip every child with the skills to become an excellent writer by the time they leave Year 6. We immerse children in high quality, diverse texts so that they are exposed a range of authors and writing styles from when they begin in nursery until they leave in year 6.
Your child will:
- Write with confidence and flow: Express themselves clearly and keep the reader engaged.
- Rich Vocabulary bank: Develop a rich vocabulary and writing techniques to create vivid descriptions.
- Structure their writing effectively: Organise their thoughts for different writing styles (e.g., stories, reports, persuasive writing).
- Master grammar and mechanics: Ensure their writing is well-presented, punctuated correctly, and free of spelling errors.
- Use technology to enhance: Using technology in the planning stages of writing, will ensure that your child will have the best possible opportunity when writing.
- Refine their work: Learn to edit and improve their writing, taking pride in every piece they produce.
We achieve this by exposing your child to a wide variety of high-quality texts. They'll explore different writing styles and use these models as inspiration to draft, edit, and refine their own work. Our Writing curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress.
Grammar, Spelling & Punctuation (GPS)
At Cheam Park Farm, the teaching of Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling (GPS) is woven within our writing curriculum. The grammar content for each year group is taught in the context of our writing lessons, in order to provide opportunities for children to apply their skills in a purposeful way.
In addition to this, children will participate in discrete spelling lessons. Our spelling curriculum reinforces and builds on the phonics sounds that are learnt in EYFS and KS1. Children will have opportunities to explore, practise and apply a new spelling rule throughout the week, with opportunities also provided to revise spelling rules from previous year groups.
Each week, children will be introduced to a spelling rule or pattern to focus on. They will then have a list of spellings to bring home to learn based on their classwork. Sometimes this rule may last for more than one week. Once your child can spell the words on the list it is useful to test them on other words that follow the same rule/pattern. This then ensures they know the rule and can apply it to any word.
You can download a list of the statutory curriculum words set by the Government here. They are broken down into Year 3/4 and Year 5/6. These are words that children should know by the end of Year 4 and Year 6. Some of these curriculum words will be included in your child’s spelling list each week. These words will be separate from the rule that they are working on in class. Some of the curriculum words your child may already know, however some are very challenging.
