Burnt Oak Junior School

Children at Burnt Oak Junior School are creative and imaginative writers.  They will have many opportunities throughout the week to write, edit and improve. We follow CUSP reading, writing and spelling programmes. https://www.unity-curriculum.co.uk/more-information/primary/#reading&writing

We teach the full National Curriculum for English. The skills that children are taught in Literacy underpin all other subjects.  They enable pupils to communicate and express themselves in all areas of their work.  Teachers will always make cross-curricular links wherever appropriate and will plan for pupils to apply the skills, knowledge and understanding that they have acquired during Literacy to other areas of the curriculum.

At Burnt Oak Junior School, we believe that reading is central to a child’s understanding of the school curriculum and is of vital importance in life. We will develop a love and appreciation of reading which will stay with children for life. We will use good reading materials and resources to provide a breadth and range of reading material in school.

Foundation and Key Stage 1 classes at Chatsworth Infant School enjoy and participate in story time sessions reguarly.  Teachers in Key Stage 2 regularly share a range of narrative and non-narrative texts with the whole class.

Each class has a book corner.   As part of home reading, children should be selecting and reading a book appropriate to their level.  We encourage parents/carers to hear their child read unless they are at a level where the pupils can assess their own reading.  Feedback on home reading is made by parents/carers or pupils within the Home Reading Records.

Whole Class CUSP reading sessions take place for 30 minutes each day.  Children who require additional support with reading normally receive more regular opportunities with another adult. 

At Chatsworth and Burnt Oak, we understand the relationship between the sounds of spoken language, and the letters and graphemes of written language. We use phonics as the first strategy to help children learn to read. We learn that phonemes are ‘a sound’ and that graphemes are ‘a sound written down’. Research shows that teaching Phonics in a structured and systematic way is the most effective way of teaching young children to read.  Almost all children who receive good teaching of Phonics will learn the skills they need to decipher new and unfamiliar words.

At Chatsworth Infant School, Phonics in the Early Years is taught on a daily basis and follows the DFE accredited Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Rivised programme. Children are taught the skills for segmenting and blending words and are introduced to new phonemes as part of a systematic synthetic approach. The teaching of Phonics continues in Years 1 and 2 as children are introduced to alternative graphemes, lesser known sounds and begin to learn some of the more complicated spelling rules.

At the end of Year 1, children are required to sit the Phonics Screening Check to assess their ability to segment and blend words. Children are presented with 40 words – a mixture of real and pseudo words and they are expected to apply their Phonics knowledge to read the words. If children are unsuccessful in Year 1 they have the opportunity to retake the test in Year 2. Intervention groups are set up for those children requiring additional support with their Phonics learning and this additional support will continue in Key Stage 2 if necessary.

Phonics in KS2

At Burnt Oak, we use Little Wandle Rapid Catch-up programme to support children requiring additional practice with phonics and reading. This programme mirrors the core Little Wandle programme and has been carefully designed for children aged 7 and above to catch up quickly.  

Please click here to access the parents’ page of the website: https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/

A good spelling programme gradually builds pupils’ spelling vocabulary therefore, when children enter Key Stage 2 they will have daily CUSP spelling lessons.

In Year 6 children are required to take a 'Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar’ test. We endeavour to prepare children for this test as early as possible and therefore make spelling and grammar a key priority in all curriculum areas.