English

My name is Mrs Finney, and I am the English lead at Saint Peter’s. I love English and my favourite thing to do is read a book and I have always loved writing. I enjoy reading stories to my three children, my lovely Year 5 class and reading for my own pleasure.

I enjoyed English at school, and went on to achieve my GCSEs in English and an A-level in English Literature, from there going onto to complete my teaching degree with a specialism in English. At St. Peters I love to make sure every child has the opportunity and support they need to flourish within the whole curriculum and have the true love of reading to last a lifetime and open any door.

Introduction to English at Saint Peter’s.

At Saint Peter’s we value everyone, and we create a fully inclusive curriculum. We value English as the foundation to a secure education and being able to speak, write and read confidently to enable our children to achieve.

Our Vision:

At Saint Peter’s, English is at the heart of all learning, which enables us to communicate with others effectively for a variety of different purposes. We truly believe that the ability to both speak and listen well is essential for children to articulate their feelings, opinions and ideas. Alongside this, valuing the thoughts and views of others and treating each other with respect is a vital part of lifelong learning.

With this in mind, it is our vision that every child who enters our school will learn to become a writer. We will do this by giving all children exciting, inspiring and engaging materials and opportunities to support and challenge them. We will give them a wide and deep experience of a range of genres, text types and authors to help them develop their own creative and personal style. We truly believe this encouragement will enable them to become confident, capable, enthusiastic writers who will develop a genuine love of writing. They will use writing to express themselves and communicate with others, writing independently for a range of purposes.

At Saint Peter’s, our vision for reading is that every child develops a true love of reading and this opens up a world of possibilities to achieve their dreams and aspirations. Every child should be able to read and enjoy reading a rich variety of genres and authors.

How do we teach English:

At Saint Peter's we teach English in a variety of ways. Every day we have a guided reading session, following the whole class guided reading approach. This enables all children to be actively involved and access exciting and engaging texts. During English, we base our learning around a key text which is chosen to make sure we have a wide range of genres and authors. We want to ensure children have a breadth of reading experience by the time they move onto the next stage of their journey at the end of Year six. Children get the opportunities to learn and experiment about different writing genres and styles through high-quality texts: fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

Here at St. Peter’s we believe that progression within the year group, but also within the school, is of the upmost importance. We have clear progression documents for reading, writing and grammar, so there is a consistent approach.

We believe that our vocabulary is an essential aspect of our lives, learning and future. We have worked with St. Margaret Ward, our High School, to produce vocabulary dictionaries, these are especially useful for parents to know what their children are learning.

We have a library with a calm and welcoming atmosphere, there is a wide range of books and the children enjoy choosing a range of fiction and non-fiction books. Our Reading Club is held in our library, and we also have an outdoor reading box, complete with a blanket and puppet. There is even a reading box in the staff room!

English within school:

Creative Writing Competition with Stoke Reads –

For World Book Day we focussed on poetry across the school, it was fabulous to see the progression and enjoyment. Key Stage 2 entered the Stoke Reads Creative Writing Competition, we wrote poems based on ‘Journeys’. We celebrated our local area and thought of the amazing journeys we go on in Stoke on Trent. What an achievement – Mobeen from Year 5 was a finalist, he said, “I am so proud, if you keep on trying and never give up you will achieve your dreams.”

Eco – Library – Stoke Reads –

We are very excited that St. Peter’s has been chosen as the first school to receive the Eco Library from Stoke Reads. What a fantastic opportunity and we are so proud of our children. There are a variety of fiction and non-fiction books that will help in our mission to be Stewards of God’s Creation.

National Story Telling Week –

We enjoyed a special week where lots of activities took place, our parents were invited in each morning to read with their children, it was so lovely to see so many parents love for reading. We had a teacher from a different class read us a story which was lots of fun and an assembly, which involved a quiz with characters and quotes –

World Book Day –

At St. Peter’s we celebrated World Book WEEK – it was a fun filled week with lots of learning opportunities. We had a whole school focus from Nursery to Year 6 on poetry, we enjoyed a whole school assembly and class workshops from a poet, what an exciting experience!

Our work is now showcased in the corridor to show everyone what fabulous poets we are and we are so proud of what we have achieved.

We would like to say a huge thank you to WHSmith in Hanley who kindly exchanged our vouchers for books for each child across the school. What an exciting moment that was, to receive our very own book to take home!

WEST END THEATRE came to St. Peter’s!

We were lucky enough to have Jason from West End theatres visit us for the day and we brought books to life through dance and drama workshops. What an opportunity! We saw lot’s of little super stars in the making!

National Story telling week –

We love reading at St. Peter’s, we choose fiction and non-fiction books. National Storytelling Week is a week for celebrating storytelling and encouraging people to tell their own stories.

Storytelling helps people to feel close to each other and to become friends. Storytelling helps people to understand the things that happen in the world. We have had a fabulous afternoon and the teachers have read a story to a different class from another Key Stage. What a treat for the staff and pupils!

Take a look –

EYFS and KS1 –

Key Stage 2 –

During the week every class looked at the beautiful book called, Rain to Rainbows –

This book also linked to our mental well being, which is so important to us here. We ensure that everyone feels safe and happy so that we learn to the best of our ability.

No More Marking –

We were very proud of one of our Year 3 children who had his work chosen to be published in the No More Marking report. He was chosen because it was a great example of a space Story – well done!! All your St. Peter’s family are so proud of you. I wonder if we will be reading your books when you become an author?

Here is a glance at our beautiful school –

Nursery rhyme land Run Mr Gingerbread Man Improving our Vocabulary in EYFS

Theatre trip in EYFS Mastering our phonics in Year 1

Alternative stories in Year 2 Magical writing and poetry in Year 3

Magical myths in Year 4 Gigantic Greeks in Year 5 Tear jerking letters in Year 6

Reading

One of our key aims at Saint Peters is to develop children’s love for reading, to in-still in children the pure joy of opening a book and getting transported to a whole new world, developing their imaginations and helping to ignite the creativity that lies within us all. Within Saint Peter’s we are very lucky to have a school library and we have recently invested a lot of love and time into our library making sure we have a wide range of books for the children to enjoy. We are focusing on developing children’s breadth of reading by introducing them to new texts and new authors on a regular basis. Children have the opportunity to expand their breadth of reading by looking at our Saint Peter’s recommends wall. When children have finished a book or a particular author they can look at our wall for recommendations of new books and authors they may enjoy, this is also supported and encouraged by all members of our school family and resources in class.

Part of our wonderful library and our recommendation wall.

We celebrate our love for reading throughout the school.

Nursery Reception Year One

Year Two Year Three Year Four

Year Five Year Six

In all classes in school we promote reading for pleasure and each class shares a class book during the week. If you would like some recommendations for what books to read at home look at our reading for pleasure progression spine. We may look at some of these texts in class throughout the year. Reading for pleasure – progression spine If you can think of any books we should add to our progression spine, please let us know!

Calling all parents and carers, when we teach reading in school we talk about the different skills in reading, for examples inference, predictions and retrieval. If you would like some help in using the terminology with your children please use the links below to look at our reading posters. The children are very familiar with these as we use them in guided reading lessons.

Have a look at our posters below to help develop your breadth of reading……how many new books and authors can you read?

Please see below for the documents

Additional Support

Please use the web links below to help support your children at home. Again if you find any good websites that you would like to recommend, please let us know and we will add them for all parents.

Key Stage One

Reading

Phonics

Writing

Key Stage Two

Reading

SPAG

Writing and other.