A Novel Approach

At Hannah More we follow a novel approach. This means that in each year group teachers use complete, high quality language rich picture books and novels to teach English. This allows our children to deepen their understanding of a text and provides meaningful contexts to develop children’s reading and writing.

Through research, we know that children’s reading experiences are linked to their progress in writing and how, through picking the right literature and helping children to understand the skill of an effective and powerful professional author, teachers can support and enhance children’s developing skills as writers in a meaningful and effective way.  This approach is particularly effective with learners who speak more than one language, as they are exposed to, and immersed in, outstanding models of written English.

While reading their class novel, children will engage in a variety of activities at appropriate ‘jumping off points’ that will help to immerse them further into the text.  To achieve this, teachers will use a variety of approaches (see appendix 11 teaching approaches for more examples) including, but not limited to, the following:

• Explore settings – visualisation, setting description, vocabulary choices.
• Explore character – Role on the Wall, character descriptions, diary entries
• Exploring illustrations
• Explore language choices – poetry, vocabulary walls
• Drama – ‘Reader’s theatre’, freeze framing, hot seating, conscience alley
• Incidental writing - Letters of advice, diary entries etc.
• Authorial intent – grammar, vocabulary choices, figurative language etc.
• Art and visualisation