English
English Curriculum
Phonics
SSSJ follows the Sounds Write programme for the teaching of phonics across Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. A 30-minute session is taught every morning and additional follow up sessions are covered in the afternoons.
Writing
The school uses our Trust Writing curriculum from year 1 to year 6. It is based on a fully progressive sequence of sentence structures which are taught discretely and then applied to a particular writing type – either to inform or to entertain. Pupils understand the key outcome for the writing unit and are provided opportunities to analyse various example texts and produce shared writing in order to build up an idea of the features and structures which can be used. The final outcomes for the units are based around the work they have done in the unit and then again skills are applied with increased independence linking to another area of the curriculum. Each unit is 6 weeks long.
EYFS follow the bespoke Rise foundation curriculum.
Class Text
Each class will study a book for a term or half a term - parents will be given advance notice of the book/s their children will be studying. We encourage parents to buy copies of the books for their children to read at home.
Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation
Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation is taught as discreet lessons weekly in Year 1 upwards and through the writing cycle. In Reception, spelling, punctuation, and grammar are taught as part of Sounds Write, Years 2 to 6 use “No Nonsense Spelling”.
Handwriting
From Reception upwards, we follow the continuous cursive scheme of handwriting, where children are expected to “start from the line every time”. They are expected to join as soon as they can form letters correctly. Please see sample on the website.
Reading
At SSSJ, reading is taught as a whole class. The texts we use come from a wide range of genres – fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Whole class reading happens at least twice a week with one shorter session (20-30 mins) focussing on exploring vocabulary and interpretation and the longer session (40-60 mins) looking in more depth at comprehension and inference and author choice. Every few weeks, pupils get the opportunity to see a teacher model answering comprehension questions and then apply and refine their skills in an independent Reading Comprehension task.
Phonics
In EYFS and KS1, children at SSSJ follow the Sounds-Write programme for their Phonics learning. There is a 30-minute session of Phonics every day in EYFS, Year 1 and Year 2. Phonics drop-ins are held every half term for parents to attend and staff are available to discuss the programme with you further if you have any queries.