English and Reading
Writing at Longwell Green School
Children at Longwell Green Primary School enjoy engaging in high quality writing experiences, often linked to their topics to give real and rich purpose to their work. Teachers plan opportunities for children to:
- Read and explore a range of genre linked texts.
- Develop speaking and listening, including through role play, drama and presentation.
- Develop strong understanding of key features of different text types.
- Experience high quality modelled writing.
- Plan, draft and write both short and extended pieces.
- Evaluate, edit and improve their work.
Children build key word and sentence level skills through each genre and across the whole curriculum. Teachers identify individual areas for development which lead to targets, that are addressed during writing sessions. Regular short burst writing is encouraged throughout each unit, giving children frequent opportunities to write and refine their skills, as regularly as possible.
The Power of Books at Longwell Green
At Longwell Green, we know the vital role books play in children’s social and academic development. Our aim is for every child to get off to an excellent start as a reader and develop a lasting love of books as they move through the school. We want every member of our Longwell Green family reading for pleasure, because we know the powerful impact it can have on children’s lives and futures.
Learning to read with fluency and understanding is an essential skill. It opens up new worlds, builds independence, and underpins every area of the curriculum now and in future education. We aim to inspire a lifelong love of reading so your child can always find comfort and joy in the pages of a good book.
We can use books to open a world that few of us can ever really experience. It should take a child to places new, through emotions and excitement and danger, safely allowing them to grow through empathy with and through the experience of others.
At Longwell Green, we do two main things with books, in two main ways:
Picture Books
Each week, children explore a high quality text sourced from our local independent bookstore and funded by our hardworking and generous FOLG (Friends of Longwell Green) and school. The book is shared twice in class; first for enjoyment, then for deconstruction. During deconstruction, children identify the plot shape and discuss key questions with talk partners or in small groups. Together as a class they examine the author’s language choices, including interesting sentence structures that engage the reader and why.
Pupils then re-tell the story, with younger writers using thumbnail images to help scaffold their ideas. They ‘magpie’ impressive words, phrases, and sentences from the text, adding their own details and flair to engage a new audience. Once children become experts, they adapt the story by changing elements such as character names or settings, adding new characters, or using the book as a springboard for a different text type, such as a diary or set of instructions.
Class Novels
Our Class Novels, or Beloved Books, are only ever high quality texts pitched at or just above pupils’ independent reading level. Each child has their own copy to care for and read along with daily. This shared reading time is much loved. The teacher models pace, emphasis, and a genuine enjoyment of the story. Together, the class unpicks key language, plot points, and sentence structures, which are highlighted and discussed. Children then explore exemplars, respond to key questions, and use the story events as inspiration, with exemplar texts providing scaffolds.
Over time, this approach greatly strengthens vocabulary, sentence cohesion, narrative flow, and pupils’ grasp of cause and effect in both fiction and non-fiction writing.
Reading Scheme
At Longwell Green, we promote a ‘phonics first’ approach in both individual and group reading sessions, as well as in the books children take home. In the earlier years, texts are carefully matched to each child’s current phonics knowledge so every child can experience success in reading.
In the early stages, we use books aligned with the Unlocking Letters and Sounds progression (including Ransom Reading Stars) to ensure full fidelity to our chosen sequence. Once children move beyond decodable texts, they progress through our wider book scheme to develop decoding, fluency and comprehension, becoming to become avid, expert readers.
Whole Class Reading Focus on Comprehension
Once children are able to decode words, it is important that they begin to develop their skills of comprehension so that they are able to truly understand what is happening in a text. In class, we have whole class reading sessions using an Inference approach model to help children understand what we are reading. It is broken into five key stages and if all adults reading with children follow these steps, their skills as a reader will develop quickly and equip them with tools to progress and become more confident and independent readers. We talk explicitly about what makes someone a ‘good reader’. If you can mirror this language at home, it will really benefit your child and help them progress even further.
Predict and Wonder (Before and during reading)
Good readers look carefully at the title and each sentence. As they read, they predict what might happen, paint a picture in their mind and wonder out loud as they ask questions about what they’re reading! I wonder if… Could it be….I can see… so I think…
Make Links (Before and during reading)
Good readers make links as they read. They use their background knowledge about other books and the world around them to understand new texts. They think about other books that they have read that are similar and they link parts of the text to things they know about the world and their own experiences. This helps them think about and UNDERSTAND what they’re reading a LOT better!
Spot Meanings, Breakdown and use Repair Strategies to repair (during reading)
Good readers are excellent at spotting words or phrases they don’t understand and they have strategies to help:
- Go back a few sentences and re-read to collect clues.
- Make pictures in your mind and re-read the hard bit.
- Look at the key words in the sentence-these have meaning.
- Read back and forward a bit. Keep going with that picture in your mind.
- Is it like another word you know? If it’s big, can you make it smaller? Use your sounds to help.
- What type of word is it? Capital letter at the start, it’s a noun. Ly,ed or ing on the end – it’s probably a verb.
- Have you heard the word used before somewhere else?
Detective Time (During and After Reading)
Good readers read a text and they look closer to make sense of it and find clues just like a real detective does. They can ask and answer questions using EVIDENCE from the text.
Get Visual (After Reading and sometimes during)
When good readers have finished reading, they rethink about what they’ve read and make a picture in their mind. They can retell what has happened by summarising the main events!
Encouraging a love of books and reading is something we value and promote passionately here at Longwell Green Primary School
We want to support your child in home as well as school and in this instance, have made some videos, one for children in Year R, 1 and 2 and another for children in Years 3,4,5 and 6 that we hope you will find useful as a family in supporting your young readers at home.
Do take a look and enjoy – we hope you gets lots of little nuggets of wisdom to support you! As we mention in the videos, if you have any questions or need further support, please do speak to your class teachers.
KS2 families to support reading at home
EYFS/KS1 families to support reading at home
The Importance of Libraries
Our School Library:
At Longwell Green, books are really important to us. From the much loved ‘book machine’ to our reading buddies and more, we celebrate and promote the joy and importance of reading and it runs through so much of what we do.
Our children LOVE our library, the ‘Blackmore Book Nook’! After much planning and fundraising to create something out of this world, it has become an incredibly special space that every child loves. A huge thank you to the Friends of Longwell Green (FOLGs), who raised a big chunk of the funds for the library and even helped contribute to purchasing some of the fantastic new books. What a wonderful addition to our school and thank you again, FOLGs!
Our Local Library is Hanham:
If you aren’t already a member, then we would strongly urge you to join Hanham library. It’s free to join and it will offer your whole family access to thousands of books. Even if your child has a well-stocked bookshelf at home, visiting the library is still really important and will help to expand your child’s reading repertoire.
You can contact the library on: 01454 868006.
Reading Buddies
Each child has a reading buddy in school: Y6 partner up with Year R and Year 1, Year 5 with Y3 and Y4 pair with Y2. Every term, the whole school mixes up and changes classrooms to be with their reading buddy- the children love this time and the school transforms into a magical space with little nooks and crannies filled with children helping and encouraging each other and sharing books together. Sometimes the children share their own writing with their reading buddy as their audience which gives purpose to their writing and makes the link between reading and writing clearer.
Longwell Green Staff are readers too!
We like to model being readers to the children so you may see posters around the school that state what different staff members are reading. In addition to many conversations we have with the children about their own love of books and changing and sharing texts with each other, we have a staff bookshelf, just like the children, outside classrooms where we share books and recommend new ones for each other.
How Parents and Carers can support Reading
Reading regularly with your child is so important, we really can’t over-emphasise what a huge difference this will make to your child’s reading progress! We strongly encourage families to hear their child read as often as possible and try to make it a pleasurable experience for all involved.
Sharing stories is also really important as well as a LOT of fun. Young children in particular love hearing stories read aloud (often the same ones over and over again). Older children enjoy having chapter books read to them or following the, ‘I read a page / you read a page’ routine.
There are 3 main approaches in which you can support your children at home:
- Reading to your child.
Reading to your child is an opportunity for you to read a story or a book to your children, the children will see you following the text and take in the story as you read. This gives the opportunity to model reading behaviour: taking care of the book, being excited to read, using expression and voices for characters or exciting facts, tracking the text from left to right, starting at the beginning of the book, turning one page at a time, holding books etc.
- Reading with your child.
Please see Inference Model notes above in the Whole Class Reading Focus on Comprehension section
Reading with your child is a lovely opportunity to share a book and enjoy the story as you discuss it. When the children are younger, you could play games with them as they read such as pointing to words in the text that they know, spotting sounds from their own names or letters and sounds learned in phonics lessons that week or other new and familiar words such as tricky words. You can make links to events in the text with things you as a family have experienced and discuss your feelings at the time.
- Hearing your child read.
Hearing your child read will be an opportunity to explore the skills learned in school and support children with their independence as well as celebrating their achievements. It is worth bearing in mind how a child reads out loud is what they hear in their head! If you want them to enjoy reading then let them read a part of the text first to decode and then read again more fluently and expressively so they feel more confident and enjoy it more! As your child’s reading skills progress you will quickly see them go from spotting familiar sounds and letters, to reading words, sentences, paragraphs and eventually whole books independently! They will thank you for supporting them with this journey and you will see their love for books and confidence grow as they feel more empowered as a reader! It is one of our favourite things to see as class teachers each year!
Here are some simple support sheets for parents of our early readers to support at home:
Why can’t I skip reading tonight?
Friends of Longwell Green Second Hand Book Fair
A couple of times each year, our hardworking FOLG team hold a second hand book fair after school. This is an excellent opportunity for you to visit with your child and select some new books to engage your children at very reasonable prices. There are also films and board games available which also encourage collaborative reading for information activities. In addition, all profits go to the school so you are getting a bargain new book for your child whilst also helping the school raise vital funds for equipment and resources to support all children.
Get Your Children Involved with School Reading events:
Across the year we have several events that celebrate and encourage reading for children. We have the FOLG second hand book fair as mentioned above as well as another Scholastic Book Fair visit, Book at Bedtime, World Book Day, Author visits and an after school reading club.
Ideas for Encouraging Your Children
If you are keen to find more information about supporting your child’s reading development then these websites may be useful for you:
The ‘Words for Life’ website is crammed full of useful tips and ideas for children at different ages.
The ‘Book Sorter’ website allows you to find thousands of recommended reads made by other children based on the selections you put in. You can also register to make your own book recommendations to encourage others!
The ‘Oxford Owl Encouraging Reading’ website is perfect for new ideas and booklist –Nikki Gamble is bound to help you whatever approach your child has to reading.
A useful website and resources to explore at home
