1. Key stage 2 Literacy

2. Reading
Reading is an essential skill that underpins the whole curriculum. The pupils have access to many high quality, challenging texts in class and as part of their weekly reading homework.
The new curriculum places even greater emphasis on sharing whole books with children, not just extracts and more reading aloud to children.
Children are expected to develop more high level comprehension skills in reading throughout Key stage 2

3. Reading in KS2 Reading in Key stage 2 is taught through:
Word reading: pronouncing words correctly
Comprehension: understanding the meaning of words and language and being able to answer questions on texts

4. Word Reading In key stage 2 children will be expected to:
apply their growing knowledge of root words, prefixes and suffixes (as listed in English Appendix 1), both to read aloud and to understand the meaning of new words they meet. e.g il, im, sub, ly, sion
read further exception words, noting the unusual correspondences between spelling and sound, and where these occur in the word.
E.g. ‘y’ that is not at the end of the word: myth, gym, pyramid
or ‘ough’ pronounced in different ways: ought, brought, fought, rough, tough, enough, though, although, dough

5. Comprehension In year 3 and 4 children will be taught to:
Develop a positive attitude to reading
understand what they have read by using skills such as inference, predicting, identifying, retrieving and recording.
Discuss a wide range of fiction, poetry, plays, non-fiction and reference books
In year 5 and 6 children will continue to develop these skills and will be taught to:
Summarise the main ideas from paragraphs
Evaluate how authors use language e.g. figurative language e.g ‘The wind whispered’ or ‘she looked like she had seen a ghost’
Distinguish between fact and opinion
Provide reasoned justifications for their views (use evidence from the text)

6. Helping your child with reading
Listen to your child read the book sent home each week.
Give your child access to lots of books at home. Use the local library regularly.
Give your child access to a wide range of reading – not just books – e.g. newspapers, magazines, leaflets or advertisements.
Ask your child questions about their understanding and their opinions of what they read. How did the reading make them feel? What did they notice?
See hand-out for more information about how to help your child with reading.

7. Writing In key stage 2 writing is taught through:
Transcription (spelling)
Composition ( writing for a purpose and audience)
Vocabulary, Grammar and Punctuation
Handwriting (neat presentation of writing)

8. Transcription Lower key stage 2: (see appendix 1 p50-61)
Use further prefixes and suffixes e.g re, sub, inter, ly, ic,
Use further homophones e.g he’ll, heel, heal
Spell words that are often mispelt e.g accept/except
Use possessive apostrophe correctly in plurals e.g girls’, boys’, children’s
Write from memory simple sentences dictated by the teacher, punctuated correctly
Upper key stage 2: Continue to build on these skills:
learn more difficult prefixes and suffixes: e.g cious, sious, cial, tial or homophones: licence/license, practice/practise
Spell some words with silent letters e.g doubt, solemn
Use a thesaurus to learn new vocabulary

9. Vocabulary, Grammar and Punctuation
Grammar has much more emphasis in the new curriculum. Pupils are expected to know the correct terminology for grammar and punctuation and much more is expected at a younger age (see glossary: p70)
Year 3 terminology:
Preposition, conjunction
word family, prefix
clause, subordinate clause
direct speech
consonant, consonant letter vowel, vowel letter
inverted commas (or ‘speech marks’)

10. Vocabulary, Grammar and Punctuation
Year 4 terminology: determiner
pronoun, possessive pronoun
Adverbial
Year 5 terminology: modal verb, relative pronoun
relative clause
parenthesis, bracket, dash
cohesion, ambiguity
Year 6 terminology: subject, object
active, passive
synonym, antonym
ellipsis, hyphen, colon, semi-colon, bullet points

11. Writing Composition Lower Key stage 2:Children will be taught to:
Plan their writing through looking at lots of examples and discussing structure, vocabulary and grammar
Record their ideas
Draft and write
Evaluate and edit
Proof-read for spelling and punctuation errors
Read aloud their own writing
Upper Key stage 2: Will build upon these skills and:
Identify the audience and purpose
Make effective vocabulary choices
Use correct tense throughout a piece of writing
Ensure correct grammar and a wide range of punctuation is used

12. Handwriting Lower key stage 2
Use the diagonal and horizontal strokes that are needed to join letters.
Increase legibility, consistency and quality of handwriting
Upper key stage 2:
Write legibly, fluently and with increasing speed

13. Types of Reading and Writing
Explanation
Stories
Instructional
Myths and legends
Poetry
Diaries
Persuasive
Reviews
Play-scripts
Letters
Recounts
Biographies
Newspaper reports
Character studies
Description
Discussion texts
Reports
Leaflets

19. How to support your child with Literacy in Key stage 2:
See list of websites.
To find other good websites simply type in ‘Key Stage 2 Literacy’ into Google and suitable websites should come up.
Test your child on as many spellings as possible and revise past spellings given as homework regularly.
Your child should read as many different types of texts as possible. Question your child's understanding of what they have read.
Discuss how texts look and why they are set out in different ways and for different purposes e.g.an advert – to persuade, A leaflet – to give information. Discuss the different features of each type of text.
Practise handwriting by copying out pieces of text in best writing
Practise writing in different styles e.g. newspaper report, magazine article, information leaflet, discussion about an issue, story writing, writing a description.
Practise writing sentences using interesting vocabulary, punctuation and different openings.