English
At Guilden Morden Primary School, we believe all our children (from EYFS to Y6) are entitled to an ambitious, knowledge-rich English curriculum that ensures they will become fluent readers and writers who are able to confidently access the demands of the secondary school curriculum.
Our English curriculum is driven by a canon of culturally important, high-quality texts. This is the stimulus for all our reading and writing. We have chosen texts which lead to the development of the personal and cultural capital of children at Guilden Morden. We believe that in order for our children leave Guilden Morden as successful learners, they need to have knowledge of a range of these texts.
Please see our English Overview for our rationale and details in full.
Sounds Write Phonics
We teach children to decode (read the words on the page) using the Sounds Write phonics programme. This is a linguistic phonics programme that teaches children 175 sound-spelling correspondences over YR to Y2 and beyond. Rather than moving on to spelling rules, which have many exceptions and contradictions, children learn and apply more sound-spelling correspondences (the extended code) in their reading and writing throughout their time at Guilden Morden. The linguistic phonics approach looks at the relationship between the spoken language and the written word. Children will study three main skills to enable them to learn to read: blending, the skills of blending letters together; segmenting, separating sounds for spelling; and manipulating, swapping sounds to develop reading accuracy. All teachers receive extensive Sounds Write training to support them to deliver the linguistic phonics lessons and yearly refresher training. The programme takes the children step-by-step through phonics, introducing them to the 44 different sounds in the English language and their different spellings gradually and systematically. The programme is highly specified, carefully sequenced and code knowledge is revisited so that it is taught to be remembered. Phonics is taught whole-class and any children who did not fully grasp the learning repeat the lesson / part of the lesson that same day to ensure gaps do not form. Children working below age-related expectations still join in with the whole-class phonics lesson and then receive additional phonics teaching focused on their stage of code knowledge. This approach ensures children catch up quickly and keep up.
Useful Links
Saying the whole alphabet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=a8ZMfYjdN-s
The links to the 'Help your child...' courses are:
https://www.udemy.com/course/help-your-child-to-read-and-write/ (Units 1 to 7)
https://www.udemy.com/course/help-your-child-to-read-and-write-part-2/ (Units 8 to 11).
Video link for how to read with your child: