English

Early Reading

All children follow The Little Wandle phonics scheme from pre-school up until the end of year 1. Some of our children will continue to follow this scheme into year 2 and beyond. Children have daily phonics lessons where they are taught to recognise phonemes, blend to read and segment to spell. Phonics is taught in five weekly cycles, with an assessment week during week six. At this point, any children identified as needing extra intervention, will engage in daily 1-1 keep up sessions.

Children will also access weekly reading groups focusing on books closely matched to their phonic knowledge. These books will be issued online for parents to share at home with their children on a weekly basis.

Useful resources to support reading at home, can be found here:

For parents | Letters and Sounds (littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk)

Reading

During Years 2 and 3 the children move on to our Accelerated Reader programme where they have access to a wide range of books that are banded for their ability. They complete little quizzes to check their understanding of the book and key assessments twice a year, in addition to their termly reading assessments.

Teachers model reading and understanding through the reading phase of their teaching sequence and also in other subjects, where children read widely for knowledge and understanding.

Guided Reading sessions take place during the week, where the teacher will work with a focus group of children and the other children will work on their reading skills.

Reading for pleasure is encouraged and celebrated across the school and children can read at lunchtimes, breaktimes and at other points in the week.  There are whole school days such as World Book Day, and the Book Fayre visits twice a year.

Writing

Writing is taught through a belief that children can write when they can articulate what they want to say. We use modelling, talk for writing and a range of resources such as talk buttons to support the teaching. Teachers inspire children to want to write, with writing linked to high quality texts and knowledge. Children are taught a range of sentence stems and sentence types so that they can apply them to their writing. Writing is modelled for children and on display to support them with their writing.

The children learn their initial letters with the flicks and joins to make joined up writing easier as they move through the school. They have handwriting practice times so they can embed this.

Spelling is taught through discrete lessons and is there is a clear progression for ages and for abilities. Key spellings are taught from Foundation and practised with the children. As the children move through the phonic phases, they are taught the spelling rules and their exceptions.

Grammar is a key part of learning to write and the children are taught through discrete lessons and through their English lessons.

Children are taught to edit their writing with purple polishing pens.

Knowledge Organisers

Year 1

Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar

Year 2

Spelling,Punctuation and Grammar

Year 3

Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar

Year 4

Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar

Year 5

Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar

Year 6

Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar

Growing Together