What is the 'English Area' ?

My name is Mr Taylor and, here at Meopham, I am a Year 3 class teacher and the school's English Subject Lead.

The role of English Leader could be summarised as follows:
 

• To lead the teaching of English in order to secure high quality teaching and learning and the effective use of resources to bring about improved standards of achievement for all pupils.

I am charged with developing, implementing, monitoring and maintaining English teaching policies and practices which reflect the school’s commitment to high achievement and which are consistent with national and school strategies and policies.

I initiate schemes of work that offer appropriate challenges to all pupils and, upon evaluation, demonstrate that they have been successful in enabling the pupils to make good progress.

Our English area will be used to advertise the reading and writing schemes that we use here at Meopham Community Academy to improve the attainment and progress of our pupils in English.

Mr Taylor

English Subject Lead

Grammar, Punctuation and Spellings

This year, one of our key priorities is improving grammar, punctuation and spelling (GPS) for all year groups. 

To help this, every child (after they have completed their phonics programme) will be taught a discrete GPS lesson weekly.  The skills taught in these sessions will be embedded into the children’s writing opportunities throughout the week. 

In addition to this, we are relaunching our ‘Focus Five’ across the school.  A ‘Focus Five’ is a personal hit list of 5 spellings for children to use across the curriculum.  Your child will have this with them throughout the day and will earn stickers and house points for using them accurately in their learning. Children on our phonics programme will have a group based ‘Focus Five’ linked to their phonics level.  Make sure to ask your child what they are working on!

A Focus Five in action

Lastly, to get everyone buzzing about spellings, we are hosting our inaugural Spelling Bee on Friday 8^th December.  Spelling lists to learn are up on Teams for your child to practise.  They have until the 1^st December to learn the words.  We will then hold heats in each class to find a representative for each house. 

How we teach handwriting

At Meopham Community Academy we recognise the importance for children to learn to write fluently and legibly. In order to achieve this, children are taught to write in a cursive style from Reception all the way through to Year 6. In order that you can support your child with their handwriting, we have published the cursive alphabet that we use here at Meopham:

Letter-join

Handwriting in Reception

What can be more fun than learning to draw spirals and zig-zags? Patterns and pre-cursive shapes can be challenging for young pupils, but Letter-join in Reception, introduces joined-up handwriting to our youngest pupils.

Via our class boards, we share Letter-join’s animations that demonstrate the pre-cursive patterns that we are learning that week. the children then trace these with pencils onto printed sheets or they can be copied by air-writing or by tracing on our classroom tablets

Watching and copying the shapes of letters and the various joining techniques will enable pupils to learn to write simple words in a cursive style at this early stage in their education.

Handwriting in Key Stage 1

KS1 is the time to introduce new letterforms (capital letters, numbers, printed letters and punctuation) and Letter-join animates all of these to show the correct formation and provides ready-made worksheets for labelling and form-filling using capital and printed letters.

As a school, we are looking for our pupils to improve their handwriting so that they are able to produce 'display-quality' work daily in their writing books. We look for neater presentation, writing on the line consistent size and spacing.

For more information on Letter-join and all of it's features and benefits, please follow this link:

Letter-join Home/School Access

Use the link below to login to your Home/School account

Writing in Pen

In Key Stage 2 children are given the opportunity to develop their handwriting fluency and style using pen. Some children prefer to continue writing with a pencil and we encourage them to practice with both pens and pencils.

Give Me 5!

Give Me Five is a whole school initiative which focuses on encouraging reading at home five of the seven days in a week.

Research from the National Literacy Trust highlights the importance of reading:

Young people who get a lot of encouragement to read at home are more likely to enjoy reading, to read frequently, to have positive attitudes towards reading and to believe that reading is important to succeed in life

Each week we will be asking that your child aims to read to an adult at home five out of the seven possible days therefore filling up five boxes in their reading record book. Of course, if you and your child want to read everyday then that is definitely allowed - we suggest a minimum of 15 minutes per day for children in Key Stage 2.

Each day that your child reads at home, please date and leave comment. Then, at the end of the school week, your child's teacher will check the reading record book to look for 'Give Me Five'. Any children who have read five times during that week will get a sticker in their reading record to acknowledge their efforts.

Children who read five times a week will be awarded housepoints.

We hope that this initiative will enable your children to continue to enjoy their reading at home. If you have any further questions please speak to your child’s class teacher or contact Mrs Farrington (our AR lead) via the school office.

Reading for Enjoyment

Here at Meopham, we use a number of approaches to encourage a love of reading in our pupils.

Our leadership team share their current reads with the children each term and encourage the children to pop by and see the reads on their recommended reading shelves.  All classes have a selection of recommended reads chosen by their class teachers and peers.

We will be taking part in the Golden 100 challenge.  Look out for this year's list of 100 books to read before leaving primary school.  How many will you know?  How many will you read?