Reading

At Iqra Primary School, we pride ourselves on the breadth of our curriculum. We strive to provide a broad, balanced, creative and highly enjoyable curriculum which not only incorporates the National Curriculum but celebrates the ideas and experiences of every learner in our school.

In Reading, we aim to provide a stimulating and dynamic environment, where children can interact with books, print and spoken language. We promote enjoyment of a wide range of genres and encourage children’s own interests. Children use their reading for learning across the curriculum and we develop their skills in reading through a variety of learning experiences.

The teaching of reading begins in Reception where the children are introduced to letter sounds over the course of the year. We then build on that prior knowledge throughout their schooling allowing them to learn new content through reading skills which leads to children’s ability to become able readers. The way we teach children to read will fundamentally influence what they understand the purpose of reading to be.

At Iqra we develop children’s love of reading through organising units of lessons around motivating books and texts. The texts might be a specific book, a play or poem, or with older children, a specific genre such as journalistic writing, with a range of different newspapers used as key texts. This approach provides our children opportunities for learning and reinforcing:

• word reading – as children encounter unfamiliar words
• grammar and punctuation – through seeing them in context and considering how they are employed for effect
• comprehension through listening to, reading, and discussing challenging texts
• vocabulary and spelling – by encountering new language spoken language
• through participating in discussions about books they will learn new words as a critical thinking tool for independent word learning
• writing (both transcription and composition).

Please see the link below for more information on the stages of reading.

http://www.readingrockets.org/teaching/reading-basics

Writing

Writing is a progression of skills that start as soon as your child picks up a pencil or crayon at home and it forever continues. At Iqra, writing is taught across the curriculum in all subjects and there are clear expectations of presentation and letter formation.

We aim to develop confident, fluent and enthusiastic writers. Writing is delivered in a cross-curricular manner using our curriculum as a stimulus. This work takes place alongside daily basic skills sessions (which focus on handwriting, spelling and phonics) as well as discreet teaching of ‘Grammar, Punctuation & Spelling’ (GPS) content.

Once these are developed the children are then able to apply this knowledge into different contexts or genres through a range of writing styles, e.g. a story, a report or a play script. Another aspect of writing is grammar which is once again taught throughout the school. The more reading opportunities a child has the more their writing will develop. We seek to create opportunities for children to experience and excel in a range of activities that enhance and extend the National Curriculum.

Developing their independence and motivation as learners and their sense of responsibility as future citizens, is at the heart of all our teaching and learning. Watch our children using these skills in a journalistic interview!

Click on ‘Our Classes’ to learn more about our English Curriculum.