English

Our Intent

At John Cross, we believe it is vital that reading is a large part of the school week, with reading opportunities across the wider curriculum.  We want our children to become confident, fluent and enthusiastic readers from an early age. This not only helps with their work in English, but also helps support their understanding in other subjects.   

We also think it is important that along side reading,the children have the chance to apply writing skills in cross curricular contexts, as well as writing for a real purpose. 

Our aims at John Cross are as follows:
•    for children to become enthusiastic and motivated readers and writers, with the help of staff who model an enthusiastic love of reading and writing. 
•    to develop children’s confidence in reading a wide variety of genres and text types
•    for children to have the skills to decode words in order to be able to read fluently with understanding of what they have read.

•    to encourage a love of literature and an enjoyment of reading for pleasure.
•    to use reading to provoke thought within children.
•    to give children a purpose, context and audience for their writing.
•    to enable children to master the technique of constructing a well planned and exciting           piece of writing for different purposes.

At John Cross, reading is taught and developed through:

• Phonics. Children in reception start to learn how to read, by using phonics.(Please see the phonics page for more details)
• Shared reading as part of a teaching sequence.
• Guided reading in small groups. (EYFS/KS1) & whole class reading (KS1)
• Whole Class Guided Reading (KS2)
• Individual reading
• Quiet reading time for pleasure
• Buddy reading
• Story time/class novels
• Read at Home/Take Home books
• Taking part in the FBA (Fantastic Book Awards) Y5/6
• Lancashire Library book loan boxes with books matching class topics
• Quality classroom libraries with a good mix of genres, fiction and non-fiction books
• Annual participation in and celebration of reading for World Book Day

Whilst the skills of writing such as spelling, punctuation and grammar are taught, along with different genres of writing, children at John Cross write for real purposes too. For example, this could be in the form of a thank you letter following a visit out of school, or a story written to be part of a collection of stories for a class book. We believe that this motivates the children and gives them a real focus and purpose, along with encouraging them to be creative thinkers. We also ensure that children have writing opportunities in other cross-curricular subjects, being able to write purposefully and at length. 

Please see examples of writing below: