About this curriculum

We enable the children to communicate in both oral and written work confidently and clearly. This allows the children to use writing to express themselves coherently, adapting their language and style for the context, purpose and audience at hand.

Children will learn to apply their reading skills in everyday life. By developing a love of reading for pleasure and the ability to access learning in a variety of subjects, we know that our children will be able to communicate effectively in the wider world.

We strive to equip our children with the skills and knowledge they need for their school career and beyond.

Through reading in particular, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development. Reading also enables pupils both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know.

Grammar

At Manadon Vale , we use the ‘No Nonsense Grammar and sentence toolkit’ so that grammar teaching links seamlessly with teaching children how to improve their writing.  This has had a positive impact on the children’s learning by putting the grammar teaching into a context and allowing the children to experiment with it within their own writing.  

Children are taught tools/ symbols that represent specific grammar content. This analogy helps them to understand the terminology as well as when and how to use it effectively.  

Writing

At Manadon Vale, our writing curriculum is designed to enable our children to become imaginative, engaging and precise writers who show control as well as adaptability in style when asked to write for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. At the core of our curriculum is the belief that children should be taught using high quality texts that vary in genre, show cultural diversity and are matched to the needs of individual classes of children.  

By using this structure to shape our writing curriculum, the children are presented with a model which enables them to understand authors’ choices and intentions, demonstrating what an effective piece of writing looks like, as well as providing a solid understanding of grammar; this provides the children with clear end points and outcome pieces to work towards. Through teaching writing skills alongside these high-quality texts, children are shown how the choices that they make as a writer impact on the reader in differing ways.  

This curriculum is taught with a logical progression of texts so that children can build on their prior learning in a systematic way to ensure that intended knowledge and skills are acquired. 

At Manadon Vale , our pupils’ writing journey begins in the early years and sequentially builds knowledge and skills, year-on-year.   

Reading

A reader from Manadon Vale Primary School will be able to:  

  • Read at an age expected standard.  
  • Apply their phonics knowledge when reading as well as other strategies to identify unknown words. For example, reading around the word for meaning, breaking it up into parts etc.  
  • Develop reading for pleasure that lasts a lifetime.  
  • Experience a wide breath of books, including a range of genres and themes.  
  • Understand a variety of text types including fiction, non-fiction and poetry.  
  • Have a good understanding for a wide range of vocabulary.  
  • Retrieve information from the text through skimming and scanning.  
  • Read between the lines to make accurate inferences. 

All EYFS and KS1 will use the ELS programme to support their reading at school. Each child is matched with a book according to their ability and one book of the sounds they are learning each week. As the children transition to Year 2 and are confident with their decoding, blending and segmenting, they will move on to Accelerated Reader scheme.

Renaissance Accelerated Reader

Renaissance Accelerated Reader balances students' independent reading practice with nonfiction reading and close-reading skills practice. It is a computer-based program that schools may use to monitor reading practice and progress. It helps teachers guide children to books that are at their individual reading levels. 

Children ready for this scheme will be quizzed at 3 points in the year to answer a series of retrieval, prediction and inference skills. This will then point them to a ZPD ( Zone of Proximal development) so the children know which level reading books to read. They can read as many books as they like during the week and at the end of the book,  will take a short quiz to check if they've understood it.

Goals / targets are set using a child's ZPD level and the time provided for reading practice, this ensures each child's target is personalised and relevant to their individual ability in reading.

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🎼 Music Club 🎼 Please could you remind your children that if they play as part of our Orchestra, they'll need their instruments tomorrow! Many thanks, Miss Eastgate and Mrs Taylor 🧡
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In Year 4 we have been having fun learning about Roman numerals and completing puzzles with tangrams.
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Please could all children in Foundation Stage bring in a named potato for Monday 30th September! All will be revealed soon!!
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Date clarification-phonics meeting for EYFS and Year One is Friday 11th October at 2pm and the EYFS curriculum meeting is at 9.30am on Friday 18th October.
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As part of our DT unit, Year 1 have been experimenting with a variety of materials to build a piece of free standing play equipment. We used megablocks, lego, stickle bricks k-nex and some junk modelling to experiment and find out what would create a stable structure.
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Year 5 afterschool reading club 😊🤓📚 Next week, it’s year 4’s opportunity to enjoy our school library with parents/carers and grandparents. ☕️ 🍪 💙
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Year 1 are keen to get making their own playgrounds as part of their DT unit - if you have any recycling at home please drop it to a member of the Year 1 team on the playground. Cereal boxes, snack bars, yoghurt pots, toilet roll tubes would all be fantastic! Thank you so much!
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Year 5 Reading Club tonight in the school library 3:20-4:00pm. All children must be accompanied by an adult. This is a chance for our parents and carers to see our school library, choose a book with their child, sit down and enjoy reading it together and ask any questions that it you may have related to reading at home or in school. Tea and coffee provided for adults and juice biscuits for children. Thank you, Miss Harris.
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Marlins class have enjoyed completing their surrealist art - inspired by Picasso - outside in this lovely weather.
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Orcas have been busy today. In computing, we looked at designing our own device thinking about inputs and outputs. Also, we are well underway with our violin lessons.
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🎶 Miss Eastgate and Mrs Taylor are SO excited for Music Club to begin tomorrow! We've had an overwhelming response to the invitations that were sent to Year 5/6 and we can't wait to start making music with you all! 🎶
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Come and join our amazing team to work at our fantastic school! 🤩 We are looking for Cleaners 🧼 and Meal Time Assistants 🍽️ Click on the link below to find all the relevant information. 👀
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Please can we remind you to label ALL items, including PE kits. It also helps to add the initial of your surname as we have a number of children with the same name in the school. Many thanks
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It was wonderful to have a few Year 6 parents/grandparents in to enjoy 'Reading Club' this week. ☕📚 🤓 Year 5 parents/carers can enjoy this opportunity next Thursday 19th September 3:20-4pm. Details of this club were sent out to all parents/carers via email. Thank you, Miss Harris.
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❤️💙💛NEW DATES ADDED!! ❤️💙💛 Is your child due to start school in September 2025? Come and see what our amazing school has to offer. 🏫 Telephone the office on 01752 705345 to book a place on one of our tours. ☎️
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