English

At Hounslow Town Primary School we believe that Literacy is a fundamental life skill. Competence in English enables children to communicate effectively at school and in the wider world, and leads to improved life opportunities. The skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing enable children to organise and express their own thoughts, and to access the knowledge and ideas of others.

Writing

Yearly overviews allow us to ensure a range of genre are taught throughout the year as well as ensuring continuity and progression across the school. Where appropriate, we link our lessons and core texts to our foundation curriculum projects. We use a range of strategies to support our children as writers such as: discrete phonics, Talk4Writing, word banks and templates.

Reading

In reading, we use a three pronged approached, Reading Café (comprehension, accuracy, fluency and extended vocabulary), group reading and book gossip.

Through the café, we explicitly teach reading strategies to the whole class and reinforce these lessons through guided/grouped work. These groups may include, reading at an instructional level, targeted support groups addressing certain concepts such as phonics or comprehension, 1:1 readers or additional reading for pleasure opportunities.

Book gossip is designed to promote a love of reading and children being able to share books they have read as well as incorporating speaking and listening activities.

Phonics

We use Little Wandle for teaching phonics. This complete phonics programme is used to teach daily lessons in Early Years and KS1. Any child who is falling behind is given targeted support through keep-up sessions. For children in year 2 and beyond who are not working at age-related expectations, rapid catch-up sessions are taught.