We place the highest importance on the successful development of literacy skills. Our curriculum caters for English teaching and development of reading, writing and speaking and listening is through our topics.

Reading

We believe that every child can be a good reader and we teach them the skills to be able to acheve this. Reading comprehension is supported by practising strategies to uncover meaning in texts. As part of our reading lessons, we ensure children of all ages practise these strategies and are able to access, explore and respond to increasingly more challenging texts. As part of the teaching of reading, we explicitly teach and model the following key reading strategies outlined in the National Curriculum to ensure that children use the strategies which prompt the comprehension process and can apply them effectively in their own reading across the curriculum:

• Using background knowledge to understand text
• Predicting
• Understanding vocabulary: developing strategies for this including recognising which vocabulary they don't understand
• Asking questions and “wondering” about the text
• Visualising
• Developing inference

Some of the above key reading strategies are also taught through the reading domains approach:

• Vocabulary (and grammar – linguistic knowledge)
• Inference
• Prediction
• Explanation
• Retrieval
• Summarising (KS2) / Sequencing (KS1).

We encourage the love of reading throughout our school through the use of Reading Buddies, this is where our Year 6 children are paired with a reader from Year 1, 2 and 3 and each week spend time listening to their buddy read. We also have a dedicated reading cabin which is available to be used throughout the school day. Once a half term, all children participate in Performance Poery, they share their performances in a whole school assembly. In addition to this, each half term, children sign up to listen to different genres of writing read by all members of our school staff.  Please see our current Reading Intent below.

Phonics

We use the Read, Write, Inc. systematic synthetic phonics program at our school. 

The program teaches children to read accurately and fluently with good comprehension. Children learn the English alphabetic code: first they learn to read the 40+ sounds and blend these sounds into words, then learn to read the same sounds with alternative graphemes. Lively phonic books are closely matched to their increasing knowledge of phonics and 'tricky' words and, as children re-read the stories, their fluency increases.  This link will show you how to say the sounds: 

Writing

Writing units are carefully mapped out throughout the year to ensure that children learn how to confidently compose a range of genres. Much of the writing that we teach is driven by either a key text or by topics that we are delivering in our wider curriculum. Through shared writing, the children look at the technical features of a text and learn how to use aspects of grammar in context. After the shared write, the children plan, draft and complete final pieces of independent writing.