Vision and Mission

At Our Lady Queen of Martyrs we believe that English is at the core of all our other subjects.  We wish to develop in our children a love of both written and spoken language, that will go with them into adulthood. A high standard of speaking, listening, reading and writing skills will place our children at an advantage in their wider curriculum studies.

We follow a Mastery Approach to the teaching of English: this means ensuring all children have mastered a step before moving on. The number of objectives or genres that are taught termly are reduced but taught in more depth and detail to embed learning and ‘make knowledge stick’. Teachers reinforce an expectation that all pupils are capable of achieving high standards in English. The large majority of pupils progress through the curriculum content at the same pace. Interventions focus on gaps in knowledge.

Teaching is underpinned by using high-quality texts and high-quality examples from the teacher which focus on skills to be taught. These texts are then analysed in depth with the children in order for them to learn and apply skills.

To achieve our aims, we follow six strategies to build an outstanding reading school

Phonics

At OLQM, we use the Read Write Inc (RWI) phonics programme, which supports the daily development of key reading and writing skills for our youngest pupils. All pupils in Reception and KS1 start the day with a RWI session in ability groups across the lower school.

Our teaching programme follows this pattern:

• We teach foundational aural skills through in the moment teaching and continuous provision throughout the first two terms of the Foundation Stage 1 (Nursery 2) year.
• We begin teaching single letter sounds to our Nursery children whenever they are ready. Typically, this happens in the summer term of the Foundation Stage 1 (Nursery 2) year.
• Throughout Reception, children learn all single letter Set 1 sounds, along with Set 2 ‘special friends (digraphs – two letters that work together to make one sound).’ Pupils also learn to blend to read and segment to spell simple words.
• Throughout KS1, children learn Set 2 and Set 3 special friends along with practising their reading fluency and tackling books which are exactly matched to their reading ability.
• Beyond Year 2, and once they have completed the RWI programme, pupils move onto the Bug Club reading book scheme.

Our Reading Lead conducts daily formative assessment along with teachers, to ensure that Phonics teaching is clearly matched to the needs of learners and that gaps in learning are quickly identified and addressed.

RWI assessments are conducted at the end of every half term, to capture pupils’ GPC recognition and blending and segmenting ability. Pupils then move up into the next group.

Monitoring of Phonics progress incorporated into termly pupil progress meetings with the Senior Leadership Team (SLT).

Daily interventions are in place for any pupils who are falling behind in their Phonics attainment.

Reading in class

All pupils enjoy daily story times in class, focused on the enjoyment of a text for its own sake. During this time, teachers use natural opportunities to highlight authors, ask inferential questions, point out key spellings and textual features, and model the love of reading.

Children enjoy regular opportunities to read one to one with adults in school.

There is a reading area in each class, which is designed to promote the love of reading. Displays focus on the children’s own favourite texts and incorporate their thoughts, feelings and questions about literature they have read, as well as featuring recommended texts from teaching staff. Books are carefully selected to include a range of genres and styles, and we deliberately include only a few titles at a time, so that the pupils can clearly see what’s on offer when they choose to read.

Home readers

Pupils take home at least one reading book a week, along with a reading record, to encourage parents to write down sessions at home.

Reading books in Early Years and KS1 are from the RWI programme. Each child takes home two books per week: one they have been reading in school that week (a RWI ‘Story book’), and a second related text which allows children to practise the graphemes and words they have been studying (a RWI ‘Book Bag Book’).

Once the pupils have graduated from RWI, and moved into KS2, they take home books from the ‘Bug Club’ scheme. Once the child has shown that they are a fluent reader, they can then take home any book of their choice.

Whole Class Reading

We plan and deliver high quality, whole class guided reading sessions, to ensure comprehension skills are taught rigorously and consistently across the school. A different skill is focused on each time, including: vocabulary, inference, prediction, retrieval and sequencing.