English
Our aim in English is to provide students with the opportunity to build upon their reading, writing and comprehension skills, including understanding a range of texts types and their purpose using both evaluative and analytical skills.
Intent Overview:
At North Star 240° our English Curriculum aims to provide students with the opportunity to build upon their reading, writing and comprehension skills including understanding a range of texts types and their purpose, using both their evaluative and analytical skills. Our curriculum builds upon the skills and knowledge acquired at key stage two and introduces the key secondary assessment objectives broken down into developmental and age-related expectations.
All students will be exposed to a broad spectrum of texts including fiction and nonfiction which are designed to strengthen and embed key reading and writing skills. As well as, open up their minds imaginatively in order to develop reading for pleasure and their general writing ability. As students reach KS4 they follow a two-set pathway and work towards leaving school with an accredited certificate in English.
Our overarching aim at North Star 240° is to ensure that all students leave school being able to read, write and use clear oracy skills. Therefore, allowing them to function as an independent individual in society.
Intent statements:
- Develop reading skills including fluency, decoding, phonics and comprehension.
- Improve written ability through a vast range of genres. Including everyday functional language and text types.
- Develop clear speaking and listening skills through debate and presentational tasks.
- Allow all students to leave with an accredited certificate in English. Giving them the opportunity to follow a post 16 pathway appropriate to their needs.
Year 7 & 8 Talk 4 Writing Programme of Study
Why Talk 4 Writing at North Star 240?
Talk 4 Writing is a unique process that uses spoken activities to develop writing skills. Quality writing is created by first expanding and developing students’ oral language skills and then teaching the necessary steps for exceptional sentence, paragraph and text construction.
T4W is powerful because it is based on the principles of how people learn. The movement from imitation to innovation to independent application can be adapted to suit the needs of learners of any stage.
The ‘Talk 4 Writing’ approach enables children to read and write independently for a variety of audiences and purposes within different text types and themes.
The Talk 4 Writing Curriculum at North Star 240 has been adapted to reflect the assessment objectives of the current secondary national curriculum for English, therefore topics are broken down to ensure there is a focus on the six key assessment objectives throughout the year within our T4W delivery. Due to the needs of our learners, there is a specific focus on the key writing and reading skills stemmed from the primary national curriculum and introducing our assessment objectives which are broken down into developmental stages from KS1 through to GCSE levels at KS4.
Power of Reading
Reading (Decoding)
Our aim for reading at North star 240° is to enthuse every child with a love of reading and books. Many children come to our school with a negative view of themselves as readers. By providing high quality reading books which are at the right level for the child and giving them the skills and confidence to read, our children make great progress. Reading is promoted daily in KS3 with dedicated reading slots after lunch and within KS4 for thirty minutes each week.
Our books are banded and reading is monitored by teachers and our reading interventions assistant using the Accelerated reader platform.
What is Accelerated Reader?
Accelerated Reader is a computer program that helps teachers manage and monitor student’s independent reading practice. Each student picks a book at his/her own level and reads it at his/her own pace. When finished, they take a short comprehension quiz on the computer. The STAR Reading assessment uses computer-adaptive technology. Questions continually adjust to the students’ responses. If the response to a question is correct, the difficulty level of the next question is increased. If a question is missed, the difficulty level of the next question is reduced. This form of assessment is used as a baseline at the beginning of the school year and repeated four times throughout the school year.
Accelerated Reader gives both students and teacher’s feedback based on the quiz results, which the teacher then uses to set targets and direct ongoing reading practice. All students at North Star 240° choose their own books to read, rather than having one assigned to them. This makes reading a much more enjoyable experience as they can choose books that are of interest to them.
According to research, children who read at least 20 minutes a day with a 90% comprehension rate (average percentage correct) on Accelerated Reader quizzes see the greatest gains.
For more information contact: Kay.Evans-Bently@northstar-academy.co.uk
