Plans for English A : English August 2009 - June 2010 Rosemary Plowright

Aims: The pupils should gain the necessary basic skills of speaking, listening,
reading and writing within an integrated relevant framework.

Listening Skills
To be able to listen, understand and respond to others, the pupils will learn how to:
• concentrate while others are speaking
• be able to take turns in speaking and listening
• make comments on what they hear
• listen to others reactions
• ask questions for greater understanding


Speaking Skills
To be able to speak clearly, fluently and confidently the pupils will learn how to:
• develop and increase their vocabulary of English as a First or Second Language.
• be able to ask and answer questions using the appropriate intonation
• share their experiences with others
• repeat rhymes and poems in groups and individually
• read their own texts clearly to others
• act out everyday situations in role-play
• make short plays from well known traditional stories from a variety of cultures
• take part in group activities which require co-operation and discussion


Reading Skills
The pupils have to be able to recognise and remember letters, sounds, words and word patterns and rhymes. Each child does this in a different way or in a combinations of ways:

By looking (visual), by listening (aural), by speaking, (oral) by building/making/ drawing/ writing ( manual), even by singing and moving around, memory can be trained and developed.

In English A we work with all these activities at 3 main stages of learning to read.
Stage 1
• letter recognition :ABC/ abc
• word recognition
• knowing that a word is made of different letters
• knowing that letters make different sounds
• building simple sentences from what we know

Stage 2
• learning frequently used words from their pattern/shape
• recognising the initial sound of a word and which letter this is
• putting sounds together to make simple words
• finding word patterns and rhymes

Stage 3
• recognising sounds at the end of words
• recognising middle sounds usually vowels
• long and short vowel sounds
• blends ( like "sl" )
• diagraphs (like "th, ch ")
• learn spelling patterns.

Writing Skills
Working with the teacher and in groups in order to develop their writing the pupils will:
• write and use familiar words in short, relevant texts
• attempt to write unfamiliar words as part of a free text
• use the texts they read as models for their own writing
• learn how to use capital letters, full stops and question marks.
• recognise and use speech marks
• understand that word choice and word order are vital to meaning
• find and use information from an illustrated text.

Handwriting
Stage 1: Forming the letters correctly
Ordinary letters
Letters with ascenders
Letters with descenders

Stage 2: Recognising the size and position of letters on the line

Stage 3: Joining up
The basic joins
Using the basic join 1. in
Using the basic join 2. ip, am, an
Using the basic join 3. cu, ey, iv
Using the basic join 4. ho, la, ma, na
Practice ascenders and descenders the right height

The break letters after which a join is not made

Practice writing sentences. Check that all joins are made properly and correctly. Try to speed up without making mistakes


All English skills are practised and integrated in the classroom topics and reinforced with Information Technology in the computor room and the classroom.



Materials:
Circle time Activities for Early Years. Jenny Mosley
New Ginn Reading 360 incl. supplementary materials
Letterland
Fiction and non-fiction books borrowed from the school library.
Own materials and texts, relevant to the actual learning situation.
Alphabet Soup: CD-rom for training letters and sounds.
Infant Toolkit 2: CD.rom for infants learning; desktop publishing(2 publish), drawing(2 paint), simple graphs(2 count), database( 2question), directions(2 go).