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09/05/24

The time for Year 11 to shine 🌞is finally here 🎉! Best wishes to each and everyone

02/05/24

Great parent session with GamCare this evening looking at the complexities of gaming and gambling for our young people. One parent said “really appreciate you offering this session: makes it easier for us parents navigating the complexity of these matters”

02/05/24

We are really happy with our new pavement pic.twitter.com/nZMQ1DzHXN

01/05/24

Daniel Anjorin, you were loved, cherished and will never be forgotten. pic.twitter.com/5L8ACwxT4U

01/05/24

If you are interested in the terrible impact on children and families living long-term in unsuitable temporary accommodation, listen to this podcast - thank you to the parents who shared their stories https://t.co/hwmkFE5j62

28/04/24

If you are interested in the terrible impact on children and families living long-term in unsuitable temporary accommodation, listen to this podcast - thank you to the parents who shared their stories https://t.co/vOj8M8plwX

22/04/24

What a weekend of marathon fun! Congratulations to all who competed 👏🏼 There is still time to sponsor our academy https://t.co/9gXJe98gDr pic.twitter.com/AIXY088wtr

21/04/24

OUR CHAMPION! 🥇 pic.twitter.com/D4157yDP30

21/04/24

Mile 18! Smashing it!! pic.twitter.com/fUVClkHLJq

21/04/24

Team Smith!!! pic.twitter.com/fAJWtew1uO

21/04/24

Good luck to Miss Smith running the London Marathon today! 🏅We’re so proud of you raising much needed funds for 🏅🎉https://t.co/IRzxbt26PB https://t.co/WbkdgqEXEk

21/04/24

RT : Ms Smith & Mrs Marshall are ready to cheer on our pupils running the https://t.co/D2iVXv

20/04/24

It’s MINI MARATHON DAY 🏃🏾‍♀️ Good luck to our children who are running today!

19/04/24

The posters are ready, the shirts are printed! Getting ready for Sunday! There is still time to show your support https://t.co/9gXJe98gDr https://t.co/VW1kVf57n5

18/04/24

If you report online, the same team will deal with your report in the same way. It's quick, convenient and means you won't wait in a queue. pic.twitter.com/4VMjoiE3TZ

17/04/24

WOW! HATO family- your community spirit never ceases to amaze us! Thank you to all who joined us for our annual Eid Tea Party today, it was so wonderful to see our community come together to celebrate by sharing food, laughter, games & dancing! https://t.co/Wpufzh7qBE

17/04/24

Our amazing practitioner Marina leading a parent workshop around anxiety this morning. Come and join us in the primary hall- we have coffee and biscuits too! ☕️ pic.twitter.com/GkhXpCRolT

16/04/24

A busy day at the academy with Coach Andre from An inspiring assembly followed by running skills workshops for primary pupils! Creating a buzz around school with less than a week to go before Miss Smiths challenge! pic.twitter.com/yA5Z9YAmjk

10/04/24

Eid Mubarak to all of our community. Wishing you a happy and peaceful Eid. We look forward to welcoming you back to school next week & celebrating together at our annual Eid Tea Party! ☪️ pic.twitter.com/EpnJhIEN1J

08/04/24

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Harris Academies
All Academies in our Federation aim to transform the lives of the students they serve by bringing about rapid improvement in examination results, personal development and aspiration.

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Willesden

English & Literacy

Learning to read is the most important thing your child will learn at school. Everything else depends on it; so we put as much energy as we possibly can into making sure that every single child learns to read as quickly as possible.

We want your child to love reading – and to want to read for themselves. This is why we put our efforts into making sure they develop a love of books as well as simply learning to read. See suggested reading lists for each year group at the bottom of this page.


Harris_Tottenham_Primary_Image_06Read Write Inc - Our approach to phonics

We start by teaching phonics in Reception and believe that this should be taught in an exciting and engaging way. We follow the Read Write Inc. Programme to support us with the planning and delivery of the teaching of reading and writing, enabling all children to develop the skills to be able to read quickly and easily. It follows a programme of teaching specific sounds and reading them in words. As children progress, they learn more complex sounds and read and spell trickier words.

Throughout the year, we will run specific Read Write Inc. workshops for parents to help adults at home to understand the approaches we use to teach early reading and writing skills. This will support pupil’s to make accelerated progress in this area. An introductory video link is available here for more information.

All of the children who are working on the RWI programme, will bring home a RWI book each week, as well as a book bag book. These books cover all of the sounds that the children have been taught which helps them to be successful in their reading. We also encourage children to bring home a book for enjoyment, which is one of our recommended reads for their age group. This is a book of their choice.


What is the phonics screening check?

In Year 1, all children are required to take the Government statutory phonics screening check which is a short assessment of children’s ability to read both real words and pseudo words. Children that do not pass the phonics screening check in Year 1 are then required to retake the test in Year 2.

For children who do not pass the check, a programme of personalised support will be put in place to support them throughout Year 2.


Reading

Once children have finished the RWI programme, they move onto our reading programme. Children take part in reading lessons that focus on vocabulary, comprehension and reading fluency. Children also have an Accelerated Reading lesson, where they take part in their weekly comprehension quiz and choose their new book for the week.

Children will bring home one Accelerated Reading book and are invited to bring home an additional book. This could be a recommended read for their age group or an additional Accelerated Reading book. Click here for more information about Accelerated Reader.


Comprehension

As reading is so important to our children’s learning and development, we ensure there is time focusing on this during our daily RWI and reading lessons. We have also incorporated a weekly comprehension lesson into our RWI and reading programmes to really encourage our children to develop their inference and understanding skills. In these lessons, we unpick and decode words and discuss what is happening in the text and predict what might happen next. We also discuss and learn the meaning of new words, helping us to increase our vocabulary. We then read questions linked to the text and use our inference skills to locate and find the answer.


Harris_Tottenham_Primary_Image_11Writing

Children are taught spelling, handwriting, writing for purpose and are encouraged to develop their creative writing skills. Some of this is delivered as part of the daily phonics sessions and also as part of the focused and independent learning activities.

We use a cursive handwriting script which teaches children the correct letter formations and also the different families of letter joins. Children across all year groups, from EYFS upwards, practise handwriting regularly.

Children are given opportunities to write for different purposes to really embed the importance of writing and give them the chance to develop their own skills. Writing is encouraged in a range of contexts in order to stimulate and engage our children.

Our writing lessons are always based around a specific book. Every week, we teach the children new vocabulary words, with the challenge of trying to use these words across the week. We teach different Alan Peat sentence types to support children’s sentence structure and to make their writing even more exciting. On Fridays, we celebrate our writing by taking part in our extended write lessons. This is where the children are asked to apply all their learning for the week and to independently write for a given purpose.


Reading Lists

Looking for ideas about what to read? Download our suggested reading lists for each year group below.