Reading

Reading is central to everything we do in the Wise Owl Trust. We foster a love for reading throughout the curriculum. We do this by providing our children with opportunities to:

Access a range of high-quality texts to ignite and support learning throughout the RESPECT Curriculum.
Experience an inviting, engaging reading area in each classroom with a range of texts to read and enjoy.
Celebrate reading through fun, exciting activities as part of a curriculum enriched with visits, visitors and experiences such as World Book Day.
Listen to stories being read to them to inspire and motivate them to read for pleasure themselves.
Read at home through providing a range of texts for the children to take home and enjoy with their families and independently. Our main reading scheme is the Oxford Reading Tree and includes stories, non-fiction texts and poetry. In addition to a book from the scheme, our children are also able to take home books from a range of great authors to read at home such as Julia Donaldson, Jaqueline Wilson and Roald Dahl.

Our children are taught the mechanics of reading through daily interactive phonics sessions which take place across EYFS and Key Stage 1 following ‘Letters and Sounds’. Within these sessions, our children have opportunities to learn, practise, apply, investigate and consolidate their skills in a range of engaging activities taught in small, streamed groups which are each tailored to the learning needs of the children.

Daily guided reading groups ensure that our Key Stage 1 children have opportunities to discuss texts, forming opinions and viewpoints. They are challenged with questions which extend their comprehension skills and understanding.

Whole class reading lessons are taught in Key Stage 2, using a variety of challenging and interesting texts from across a range of text types. Our children are taught to analyse these texts in greater depth, drawing evidence from the texts to support their viewpoints and becoming more critical of an author’s intentions. Our children further develop their vocabulary and learn to answer a range of questions with an increasing amount of detail and consideration.

Writing

Across the Wise Owl Trust, we believe that great readers become great writers and therefore our curriculum is enriched with high-quality, engaging texts. We provide our children with opportunities to:

Learn spelling, punctuation and grammar in exciting, interactive ways and to apply these skills across the curriculum.
Be proud of their presentation and handwriting through the award of pen licences and fountain pens.
Have experience of the full writing process, with opportunities to draft, edit and ‘publish’ their pieces of writing.
Write for a range of purposes and audiences.
Write in a wide range of text types including stories, non-fiction texts and poetry,
Celebrate their success and progress through awards and acknowledgement such as our ‘Writer of the Week’ certificate and end of term ‘Writer of the Term’ trophy.
Develop a wide-ranging vocabulary through exposure to high-level, broad texts.
Have regular, purposeful written and oral feedback about their work so that they can progress further.
Access a wide range of resources to enrich learning, such as ICT, dictionaries, thesauruses, word mats and purposeful classroom displays.

The themed approach of our RESPECT Curriculum provides our children with real purpose for their writing and through being emerged in the topic they are learning about, they are able to apply their wide-ranging knowledge from across the curriculum to what they write. Using ‘Talk 4 Writing’ as a basis means that our children are never short of ideas when it comes to writing! They are taught to imitate, innovate and then invent their own texts with plenty of opportunities for collaborative group work and speaking and listening activities!

Maths

We want the children of our academies to become confident and critical mathematicians who are able to solve problems efficiently, applying them in real life contexts. We provide our children with opportunities to:

Develop good mental strategies, committing what has been learnt to memory.
Develop efficient methods of recording working in line with the academy’s calculation policy.
Develop the ability to work independently, selecting their own methods and resources needed to support learning.
Develop a love of maths through learning in a range of different ways.
Access a range of resources to support their learning,
Learn through real life scenarios, experiencing practical applications of maths.
Develop an accurate mathematical vocabulary to be able to share their thinking, describe strategies and learn from each other’s responses

Through the RESPECT Curriculum, our children are provided with rich and varied opportunities to apply their mathematical knowledge. We believe that central to an ability to select and apply skills effectively is the need for a clear understanding of core mathematical skills. We separate these core skills into 4 main areas: Number, Shape & Space, Measure and Statistics.