English at Bosbury

Being a Reader and Writer at Bosbury CE Primary School

The skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening are vitally important, and will have a direct influence and impact on a child’s progress in all other areas of the curriculum.

They are key skills that will empower the children to be successful lifelong learners. Our aim is to encourage a love of reading and writing, which will remain with a child for life. Children are offered a wide range of reading materials both in classrooms and through weekly visits to the school library, including fiction, non-fiction and poetry. We use the READ, WRITE, INC phonics scheme to teach reading.

Pupils are encouraged to share books with adults working in the school, as well as take them home to share with family and friends. A reading diary is used to liaise with everyone involved.

- Mrs H Roberts (Bosbury CE Primary School English Lead)

- Mrs J Wilesmith (Bosbury CE Primary School Reading and Phonics Lead)

The school has excellent resources for teaching English, which include whole class modelled (shown how to do it) reading and writing, and guided, independent group activities. Emphasis is put on reading good quality texts and developing comprehension, grammar and spelling skills.

Children are encouraged to write independently in a variety of forms on a regular basis. These may be an imaginative story, the re-telling a well known story, a factual recount of something that has happened, instructions or perhaps a letter. They quickly begin to use wordbooks, and later, dictionaries to support their spelling.

Many opportunities are made for our children to become more confident speakers and careful listeners. They are encouraged to discuss problems and ideas in pairs and then briefly feed them back to the class. Opportunities are also provided for our children to become more confident speakers through role-play activities, drama and assemblies. Those children who need support in the skills of speaking and listening will be given the opportunity within class.

We recognise the importance of developing a clear style of handwriting early on. In the Reception Class, children are taught to form each letter of the alphabet correctly and to become familiar with each letter name and its sound.

Since September 2022, our school has been using the excellent Read, Write Inc. scheme in order to teach phonics at both Foundation Level and Key Stage 1. For those children who would benefit from further phonics intervention at the start of Key Stage 2, we extend the scheme into Year 3. Pupils receive Read, Write Inc. teaching for forty minutes at the start of each school day.

In fact we love phonics so much at Bosbury that we had to give this fundamental aspect of children's learning its very own page on the website! You can view it HERE for further information, including a useful PowerPoint presentation detailing the Read, Write Inc. scheme.