English

At Cookridge Holy Trinity Primary School, as an inclusive school, we aim to achieve the highest standards of English capable for all our pupils. We strive for our pupils to leave Holy Trinity School being able to confidently read and write for a range of purposes on both paper and screen. We also aim to develop their speaking skills so they can express themselves in a wide range in contexts. Over their time in school we aim to instil in all our pupils a love of speaking, reading and writing that will both enhance and support their life long learning journey.

Aims for English learning and teaching at Holy Trinity School.

We are continually aiming to raise the standards of achievement in English of all our pupils. Our English curriculum aims to:

Instil a positive attitude to English by making it interesting, purposeful and enjoyable.
Develop an awareness of the relevance and importance of literacy skills in the real world.
Offer a broad based curriculum which enables pupils to operate effectively at their own level within the National Curriculum.
Promote and encourage the use of a variety of approaches in English to interest and engage all learners.
Develop, use and understand the language of literacy at their own level
Develop a clear, legible handwriting style and instil the importance of high standards of presentation.
Develop the ability to think logically, reasonable and creatively in English lessons.
Develop the ability to work both independently and collaboratively.
Provide opportunities to use the skills learned in English in a wide variety of learning situations.
Allow pupils to achieve a sense of satisfaction through success.
Develop self-confidence and a positive attitude to their abilities.

January 2020

The children have loved their sessions with the Alive and Kicking drama company this half term! They have taken part in some wonderful learning tasks exploring the characters and the worlds in which they live and had the chance to demonstrate their fantastic acting skills. Year 6 were visited by a Dragon Lord, Year 2 explored Mr Mcgregor’s garden and helped Peter escape while Year 3 ventured into The Cave! More adventures to follow…

Book Bingo competition – Autumn term

There has been LOTS of enthusiasm for our Book Bingo this term, it’s brilliant to know so much reading is going on in school and at home!

The class winners are:

The KS1 class with the most entries: 2S

The KS2 class with the most entries: 5E (I believe there was some quite creative thinking involved when completing your bingo sheets 5E!!)

Both these classes will be given £25 to spend on new books for your classrooms.

Individual winners drawn from all the entries:

Alexia Lui 2J

Oscar Webber 3W

Ella Ledger 4L

You will each receive a £5 book token.

Well done to everyone who entered, watch this space for you next reading challenge!

Reading shed – November 2019

Some of you may have noticed our reading shed has now arrived and is ready for the children to start using at playtime. It’s a wonderful resource to encourage the children to read and gives them a quiet space on the busy playground. There is a great range of books inside and the PTA have kindly bought some cushions and rugs to make it even more cosy.

Vocabulary Day – October 2019

Our annual Vocabulary day saw the children dressing in some fantastic costumes to represent their chosen word. Thank you to everyone who stayed for the parade, the children love the chance to show their costumes off! We were so impressed by the variety of words this year. well done everyone!

Book week – October 2019

A huge thank you to everyone who came along to the book fair this week and to our brilliant year 6 helpers who were fantastic at making recommendations! It was wonderful to see so many children excited by the books they were buying. Thanks to all your purchases we now have just over £700 in commission to spend on books for school!

13th October 2017
Wow – What a fabulous Book Week!

Firstly thank you to everyone who visited the Book Fair this week, helping us raise the profile of reading and earning money for books for our school in the process. I will let you know soon how much money we raised through Book Fair and Read-a-thon.

Secondly, reading photo competition entries are now on the display outside the school hall, so next time you’re passing, take a look at some of the creative reading spots we found!

Well done if you achieved your Read-a-thon target this week; you can now start collecting in any sponsor money and please return it to school along with your sponsor card by next Friday.

Finally, thank you to all those who stayed to watch our vocabulary parade yesterday – there were so many super costumes and words around school and we had lots of fun later in the morning during our catwalk parade in the hall, sharing vocabulary and looking at each other’s outfits – well done everyone on a super week!

Mrs Casling

At Cookridge Holy Trinity Primary School, as an inclusive school, we aim to achieve the highest standards of Literacy capable for all our pupils. We aim for our pupils to leave Holy Trinity School being able to both speak and listen for a wide range of purposes in different contexts and being able to read and write for a range of purposes on paper and screen. We aim to instil in all our pupils a love of speaking, reading and writing that will both encourage and support their life long learning journey.

Aims for English learning and teaching at Holy Trinity School

We are continually aiming to raise the standards of achievement in English of all our pupils. Our English curriculum aims to:

Instil a positive attitude to English by making it interesting, purposeful and enjoyable.
Develop an awareness of the relevance and importance of literacy skills in the real world.
Offer a broad based curriculum which enables pupils to operate effectively at their own level within the National Curriculum.
Promote and encourage the use of a variety of approaches in English to interest and engage all learners.
Develop, use and understand the language of literacy at their own level
Develop a clear, legible handwriting style and instil the importance of high standards of presentation.
Develop the ability to think logically, reasonable and creatively in English lessons.
Develop the ability to work both independently and collaboratively.
Provide opportunities to use the skills learned in English in a wide variety of learning situations.
Allow pupils to achieve a sense of satisfaction through success.
Develop self confidence and a positive attitude to their abilities.

Handwriting:

Handwriting information

Handwriting booklet 1

Handwriting booklet 2

Spelling in Key Stage 2

Thanks for your feedback.

Click here for the survey results and outcomes.

Please check year group pages for spelling lists.

Reading and Phonics

Reading with RIC

At our school we develop reading comprehension through regulare lesson starters that we call reading with RIC. This stands for:

Retrieve
Interpret
Choice

Retrieval questions are ones where the answers are right there in the text, and we just need to retrieve them.

Interpret questions require us to think about predictions, reasons, reading between the lines.

Choice questions help us to think about why an author has used specific language or features. What are they trying to achieve?

Around school in each classroom you will see the following symbols for RIC on display:

Sometimes we discuss them aloud and other times we write them in our books.

Here is an example:

Here is another example; this time we would watch the video clip and use it to answer the questions.

A useful guide to language structure progression from EYFS to Y6.

When having conversations with your children at home, try to encourage them to use some of this language and terminology.

YR EYFS Flashcards Language Structures
Y1 Flashcards Language Structures
Y2 Flashcards Language Structures
Y3 Flashcards Language Structures
Y4 Flashcards Language Structures
Y5 Flashcards Language Structures
Y6 Flashcards Language Structures

Trinity Times

Trinity Times – No.12
Trinity Times – No.13
Trinity Times – No.14

Useful English websites

Homework help – spelling and grammar games

http://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/literacy/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks2/english/

Key Stage 1 https://www.topmarks.co.uk/english-games/5-7-years/words-and-spelling

Key Stage 2 https://www.topmarks.co.uk/english-games/7-11-years/spelling-and-grammar

http://www.crickweb.co.uk/ks2literacy.html

Suggestions for what to read – Great for ideas if you or your child are struggling to find a good book to get into. There’s a site for adults too!

http://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/

First News newspapers – great for keeping up to date with the latest world events in a child-friendly way. Watch the news and interesting videos about current affairs. Six copies of the newspaper come into Y6 each week, but you can also buy individual paper copies in newsagents and supermarkets.

https://live.firstnews.co.uk/

Fiction Express – as a school we subscribe to this and read weekly chapters in school. The authors write a chapter each week, we vote and the most popular outcome formulates the following week’s chapter – a great way to get involved in the writing process! All children caneasily be issued with personal log ins so they can access it at home and re-read chapters or read previous texts. Ask your child’s teacher or Mrs Casling for their log in details if you don’t already have them.

https://www.fictionexpress.co.uk/