If you are looking for a school place for your child, please contact us for a guided tour.

English

English at Anderton develops the oracy, reading and writing of our children; these three skills are interdependent and mastering them is the key to effective communication. Through rich and diverse experiences for a wide range of purposes and audiences, the children develop a strong command of the English language. As this is fundamental to accessing all learning, these skills are woven into the fabric of our whole curriculum.

Our children’s oracy is developed by encouraging them to share thoughts and emotions with clarity and definition, refining their listening and speaking to become thoughtful exchanges, and providing meaningful opportunities to develop their confidence and aptitude for performance and delivery in a range of situations.

Our children’s reading is developed by building on a foundation of phonics and nurtured to comprehend a spectrum of language, nourishing their imagination and inquisitive minds with a wealth of literature that entertains and informs, and exploring and celebrating the rich legacy of the written word. At Anderton Primary school we follow the ‘Red Rose Letters and Sounds’ Phonics scheme throughout EYFS and KS1.

Our children’s writing is developed by sourcing inspiration and the tools required from high-quality texts, fusing the elements of composition and transcription to articulate entertainment or information for the reader, and crafting the piece of work as it’s taken from conception to publication.

Anderton’s English curriculum is designed to meet the needs of all our children and is delivered with great passion. We are persistent in our intent to ensure that all our children are developed into effective communicators, learners and lovers of listening, speaking, reading and writing. As our children pass through our school, they will explore, create and innovate the English language to develop holistically and prepare them for future prosperity.

 

“I enjoy reading because it can take you anywhere; you can be sitting on your couch in real life, but be at Hogwarts fighting Voldemort in your Harry Potter book.” – HA, Year 4

Our Library

Our inspirational woodland library, which was part-funded by our PTFA, is now open!



You can find more details about our English curriculum on the year group pages!

 

Our Phonics Scheme

Phonics scheme: Red Rose Letters and Sounds.

For more information and useful resources, look at our Phonics Materials below.

 

Red Rose Letters and Sounds is our chosen Phonics programme.  It teaches children to read by identifying the phonemes (the smallest unit of sound) and graphemes (the written version of the sound) within words and using these to read words.

Children begin learning Phonics at the very beginning of Reception and it is explicitly taught every day during a dedicated slot on the timetable. Children are given the knowledge and the skills to then apply this independently.

Throughout the day, children will use their growing Phonics knowledge to support them in other areas of the curriculum and will have many opportunities to practise their reading. This includes reading 1:1 with a member of staff, with a partner during paired reading and/or as a class.

Children continue daily Phonics lessons in Year 1 and further through the school to ensure all children become confident, fluent readers.

We follow the Red Rose Letters & Sounds progression and sequence. This allows our children to practice their existing phonic knowledge whilst building their understanding of the ‘code’ of our language GPCs (Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence). As a result, our children can tackle any unfamiliar words that they might discover.

Children experience the joy of books and language whilst rapidly acquiring the skills they need to become fluent independent readers and writers. Red Rose Letters and Sounds teaches relevant, useful and ambitious vocabulary to support each child’s journey to becoming fluent and independent readers.

We begin by teaching the single letter sounds before moving to diagraphs sh (two letters spelling one sound), trigraphs ‘igh’ (three letters spelling one sound) and quadgraphs ‘eigh’ (four letters spelling one sound).

We teach children to:

  • Decode (read) by identifying each sound within a word and blending them together to read fluently
  • Encode (write) by segmenting each sound to write words accurately

The structure of Red Rose Letters & Sounds lessons allows children to know what is coming next, what they need to do, and how to achieve success. This makes it easier for children to learn the GPCs we are teaching (the alphabetic code) and how to apply this when reading.

Interventions are delivered within the lesson by the teacher, any child who is struggling with the new knowledge can be immediately targeted with appropriate support. Where further support is required, additional interventions are used where needed. These interventions are short, specific and effective.

Supporting Reading at Home:

Children will only read books that are entirely decodable, this means that they should be able to read these books as they already know the code contained within the book. We only use pure sounds when decoding words (no ‘uh’ after the sound). We want children to practise reading their book 4 times across the week working on these skills:

  • Decode – sounding out and blending to read the word.
  • Fluency – reading words with less obvious decoding.
  • Expression – using intonation and expression to bring the text to life.

We must use pure sounds when we are pronouncing the sounds and supporting children in reading words. If we mispronounce these sounds, we will make reading harder for our children. Please watch the videos below for how to accurately pronounce these sounds.

At the beginning of each academic year, we will hold an information session for parents and carers to find out more about what we do for Phonics, Reading and English at our schools. Please do join us.

 

AWESOME AUTHORS COMPETITION | 2022-2023

This year we are running a story writing competition for all our budding authors with a story to tell. Children must plan, draft, edit/improve and submit an original story.

There will be a prize for first, second and third place:

1st prize: published book

2nd prize: story writing Kit

3rd prize: book voucher

*To qualify for ‘1st prize’ your story must be completely original with no use of copyrighted material (brands etc) and be at least 25 A4 pages long using Calibri font size 18.

The closing date is Friday 27th January and stories should be submitted in the form of a word document to english@anderton.lancs.sch.uk with the details of your child’s name and class.

Check out the poster!

 

If you would like more information about English at Anderton, please contact Mr Tilley, who is the English Lead at our school.

 

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR ACTIVITIES DAY-TO-DAY

CONNECT WITH OUR SCHOOL ON FACEBOOK

Tel. 01257 480551

bursar@anderton.lancs.sch.uk

School award logos