English is one of the core subjects at Tetney Primary School and is taught every morning. 

All pupils at our school learn English through Progressive Writing, an approach designed by LEAD Teaching School. Each term, each class focuses their learning around a specific book and reads it together to explore the authorial intent, with work around what has been discovered. By immersing themselves in the book together, the classes really engage with their learning and we have found that the work produced from this scheme has been of a very high standard while also demonstrating understanding of a range of English areas.  This contributes to a greater understanding of writing styles and encourages independence.

Some pupils may have additional English support through materials from the Read Write Inc scheme, which delivers fast-paced learning of all aspects of English (spelling, phonics, handwriting, reading and writing) in an hour daily.

There is also an additional Reading sessions on top of Writing, this focuses on the VIPERs approach to explore each discrete reading content domain. As a school, we strive to nurture a love of reading and each class has a reading area with age-appropriate texts, as well as a shared library. 

Spelling is also a priority, with each class looking at a different age-relevant spelling pattern linked to the National Curriculum guidance for twenty minutes daily, using the Active Spelling scheme, designed by the LEAD Teaching School. The spelling pattern is introduced each, with supplementary work to help consolidate the new learning taking place on each subsequent day, focusing on phonology, authography, graphology, morphology and etymology. 

Children have the time and support to learn and apply learnt skills throughout their time at Tetney and, from Year 1 upwards, use blue pens to edit and correct errors in work either independently or with some direction from a staff member.

The Question Matrix is very useful for constructing questions when listening to a child read.

Some questions can be thought of by using the words in the top-left corner of the grid (e.g. 'What is the colour of the boy's hair?', 'Where is Dad in the picture?', 'When did Mr Stink make that noise?' or 'Which animals can you see?'). These are called 'literal' or 'retrieval' questions, as they ask a reader to find and retrieve the information that has literally been given to them by an author or illustrator. This is sometimes called 'reading on the lines' as the information is there.

Higher-order questions can be made by using the words towards the bottom-right corner of the grid (e.g. 'Why would Harry react that way?', 'How might you have reacted if you were there?', 'Why might Charlie be running home with the ticket?', 'Who will Charlie tell first and why, do you think?'). These questions fall into two categories:
- 'deduction' questions, which ask a reader to consider what the author has told them and what could be implied by that (as these require more careful thinking about what is on the page, this is sometimes called 'reading between the lines');
- and 'inference' questions, which ask a reader to think about what has been implied and use their wider knowledge of the world to understand what the author might mean (this is sometimes called 'reading beyond the lines').
For example, a character in a book may step outside and put up their umbrella. The implication is that it is raining (which would be a deduction) but a reader could make the inference that the setting is Britain as the reader knows that it frequently rains in that country.

Questions used in school, both for our assessment and for national tests such as SATs, use a range of these questions. We therefore suggest having this matrix to hand when spending time listening to your child reading and playing an active role in that by asking questions, which will push their understanding of a text much further!