Literacy
Talk 4 Writing
Talk for Writing is an approach to teaching writing that emphasizes three teaching methods: ‘imitation’ (where pupils learn texts by heart, so they can discuss and dissect them), ‘innovation’ (where pupils adapt stories to create their own versions), and ‘invention/independent application’ (where pupils create original stories). These tasks aim to improve writing ability by giving pupils an understanding of the structure and elements of written language.
The Talk for Writing approach enables children to read and write independently for a variety of audiences and purposes within different subjects. A key feature is that children internalise the language structures needed to write through ‘talking the text’ as well as close reading. The approach moves from dependence towards independence with the teacher using shared and guided teaching to develop the ability in children to write creatively and powerfully.
Schools underpin their English work by establishing a core reading spine of quality fiction, poetry and non-fiction that all children experience and draw upon. Imaginative units of work are developed to create a whole-school plan that is refined over the years, is well-resourced and documented to release teachers from planning and preparation so that they can focus on adapting their teaching for children’s learning.
Soundwaves Y3-6
Spelling starts with sounds. Sound Waves uses systematic synthetic phonics and word study to effectively teach spelling skills. This research-aligned approach will help students become spelling superstars.
Sound Waves uses synthetic phonics to explicitly and systematically teach students how sounds (phonemes) are represented by letter/s (graphemes) to form written words.
Instruction is intentionally pre-planned so that students progress from learning simple, broadly applicable phoneme–grapheme relationships to those that are more complex and unusual.
Successful spelling also relies on an understanding that words can be constructed from meaningful parts.
Sound Waves gets students excited about word study across all year levels through progressive activities that explore morphology (prefixes, suffixes and Greek and Latin roots), and language concepts like homophones and homographs.
Upper primary students delve deeper into etymology (word origins), helping them to understand and remember unusual or difficult words.
SoundsWrite Early Years
Sounds-Write is a quality first phonics programme. Its purpose is to provide a comprehensive system with which to teach reading, spelling and writing.
Follow this link to learn what spelling will look like for your child. The link will support you in helping your child learn best at home!
Heggerty
Developed in 2003 by Dr Michael Heggerty, the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum is a systematic 35 week program of daily lesson plans that provide a high level of explicit modelling and student engagement. Each level of the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum focuses on eight phonemic awareness skills, along with two additional activities to develop letter and sound recognition, and language awareness.
The Heggerty Curriculum includes explicit instruction in the following phonological and phonemic awareness skills:
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Rhyming
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Onset Fluency
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Blending
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Isolating final and medial phonemes (sounds)
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Segmenting
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Adding Phonemes
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Deleting Phonemes
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Substituting Phonemes