Mrs Harwood and Mrs Leng are our English Leads. 

At Briar Hill we value the importance of spoken langauge and provide many opportunities for children to think, discuss, plan, listen, speak and learn and to reflect in an imaginative and collaborative way.  We have our own bespoke Systematic Synthetic Phonic programme to teach daily phonics. We will share this approach with you in a range of ways throughout the year to help you support your child when learning the letter sounds (phonemes) and shapes (grpaheme) so that they can learn to decode and practice their reading and writing at home.

Please refer to the notes in your child's reading diary for further information about the importance of decoding when reading with your child at home.   

Alongside our daily phonic lessons we also teach pre-cursive and cursive handwriting through the 'Letterjoin' scheme with excellent outcomes for children. 

Parents can access this via letterjoin and the username: ak6372

Tablet password pattern is:  L shape          PC password: home

x x x

x x x

x x x

Our English curriculum has been well sequenced so that children learn and remember explicitly taught phonics, spelling, punctuation and grammar knowledge through meaningful, engaging and memorable texts and topics.  We enable our children to become confident speakers, listeners, readers and writers so that they have the secure foundations to feel succes and are ready for future learning. 

Decoding and Word Reading 

Decoding is the skill of recognising the letters (graphemes) and knowing what sound (phoneme) they say when sounded out. To learn to read and understand the phonetic code children must learn to recognise each phoneme. Phonemes can be made with one letter making one sound such 'b' or in b-e-d or or two letters making one sound such a 'ai' in p-ai-n or r-ai-n (these are called digraphs) or three letters making one sound such as 'igh' in n-igh-t or h-igh (these are called trigraphs). 

Please encourage your child to read and decode using their phonic skills. Securing their understanding of their taught phonics will enable them to access a broad range of texts as they are gradually developing their reading knowledge and skills.  Within phonics children are also taught words that cannot be decoded, called tricky words such as 'the' and 'said'. 

Prosody and Comprehension

Prosody is using appropriate expression and developing fluency. Comprehension is demonstrating an understanding of what you have read. 

Examples of English at Briar Hill