Welcome to KSS English!

Reading - our intent

It is our intent at Kirkstall St Stephen's C of E to provide pupils with a high-quality education in Reading that will challenge pupils to become confident, fluent readers with a passion and excitement for reading. We cherish all our children at Kirkstall St Stephens and aim to instil a love of reading through engaging lessons using high-quality texts and stories.

With regard to reading, phonics will be emphasised in the early teaching of reading to beginners when they start school in Reception class. Fluency in reading will be developed once children are secure in their phonics knowledge and high-frequency words. All children will be given the opportunity to read with an adult to progress their fluency across all year groups.

We encourage all pupils to read independently and widely across fiction, poetry and non-fiction as well as listen to good-quality stories in class story time which develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading, and to gain a wider range of vocabulary and knowledge across the curriculum and develop their comprehension skills.

It is our intention to ensure that, by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read fluently, and with confidence, in any subject in their forthcoming secondary education.

Writing - our intent

Our intent at Kirkstall St Stephens C of E Primary is to provide children with a high-quality education in writing. Writing is a crucial part of our curriculum, and we believe that every child should be challenged to become an independent, confident and capable writer.
We cherish all children at Kirkstall St Stephens, and we teach writing to empower children to be successful in every aspect of school life, by giving them the skills to write creatively across all subject areas. We teach children to be reflective learners who can review, edit and improve on their work. We want our children to succeed in life and recognise that having excellent language and writing skills will open doors to great opportunities.

When our children leave Kirkstall St Stephens, they will write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their style and language in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. Children will have the spelling, punctuation and grammar skills they need to be successful and resilient writers who can confidently express, elaborate and explain themselves in a variety of different genres.

Please see the attached overview document that explains the Love to Read and Writing curriculum and the knowledge, skills and vocabulary progression map from Reception to Year 6.

We have also created Writing Knowledge Organisers (KO) for each year group and these have been added below. These are child-friendly documents that demonstrate how we will implement the new curriculum, including the powerful knowledge that we wish children to learn after each topic. The impact of our curriculum will be based on how well the children retain this knowledge.

In addition to this is the Writing Process that each class will follow to ensure quality pieces of writing are produced.

World Book Day 2022

What a wonderful World Book Day had by all. The children looked fantastic and made a great effort with their outfits. Thank you to all those children who took part in our competition 'Reading in strange places'. Thank you to staff for the amazing effort too. Have a look in the files for our staff 'The Masked Reader' video. Can you guess who is behind the mask? Children had a go at this in class on World Book Day. 

Files to Download