Our LearningEnglish
Text
Our English Team, Miss Marshall, Mrs Frayne-Johnson, Mrs Henry, Mrs Stimpson, Miss Smith and Miss Duke welcomes you...
Reading at Our School
At our school, we are committed to developing children who love reading and have the skills to read fluently, confidently and with understanding. Reading is at the heart of our curriculum, and we provide a carefully planned journey from learning to read to reading to learn. Through high-quality teaching, rich texts and regular reading opportunities, we ensure that every child can become a successful reader.
Nursery and Early Reading
Our reading journey begins in Nursery, where children are immersed in books, stories, rhymes and language-rich experiences. Through daily story times, book talk, singing, role play and conversations, children develop a love of stories and begin to understand how books work. Texts are carefully chosen to be age-appropriate, engaging and vocabulary-rich, helping children build listening, attention and communication skills that provide the foundations for future reading success.
In Reception and Key Stage 1, we teach early reading through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme. Children learn to read through systematic synthetic phonics teaching, developing secure knowledge of sounds and how these are represented in words.
Children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 take part in regular group reading sessions each week. These carefully structured sessions allow children to practise decoding, develop fluency and build confidence by reading books that are closely matched to their phonics knowledge. Through repeated reading and skilled teacher support, children develop accuracy, expression and understanding.
Developing Fluency
Once children have become accurate readers, they move on to our Reading Fluency Programme, which supports children in becoming smooth, expressive and confident readers. This approach is used with pupils up to Year 4 and beyond where needed, ensuring that all children develop the fluency required to access increasingly challenging texts.
Fluent reading is a crucial bridge between decoding and comprehension. By improving reading rate, accuracy and prosody (expression), children are able to focus more fully on understanding what they read.
Key Stage 2 Reading
In Key Stage 2, reading is taught through the Jane Considine Reading Programme, which encourages children to engage deeply with high-quality texts and develop their comprehension skills through discussion, exploration and reflection.
For children who still require support with fluency, targeted fluency teaching continues alongside whole-class reading lessons. Once children are fluent readers, the focus shifts increasingly towards developing sophisticated comprehension skills. Pupils learn to retrieve information, infer meaning, make predictions, summarise, explain vocabulary choices and analyse an author's intent across a wide range of texts and genres.
A Rich Reading Diet
We believe that children should experience a broad and diverse range of literature throughout their time at school. Our reading curriculum includes:
- High-quality fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
- Classic and contemporary texts.
- Books that reflect a range of cultures, experiences and perspectives.
- Challenging and engaging texts that broaden children's knowledge and vocabulary.
- Opportunities to read across different genres and text types.
Our collection of reading texts, reading scheme books and class novels is carefully selected to ensure quality, relevance and challenge. Resources are regularly evaluated and refreshed so that children continue to encounter engaging, ambitious and diverse literature that supports both enjoyment and achievement in reading.
Our Aim
By providing a clear progression from early language development and story experiences in Nursery, through phonics and fluency, to advanced comprehension in Key Stage 2, we aim to develop confident, enthusiastic readers who read widely, think critically and develop a lifelong love of reading. Every child is supported to become a fluent reader who can access, enjoy and learn from an ever-growing range of texts.
Writing at our school
Writing is using written words in different styles and techniques to communicate ideas.
As authors we learn to:
- Present neatly - by developing an understanding of handwriting and clear presentation
- Spell correctly - by understanding the need for accurate spelling
- Punctuate accurately - by understanding that punctuation adds to clarity of meaning
- Write with purpose - by understanding the purpose or purposes for a piece of writing.
- Use imaginative description - by developing an appreciation of how best to convey ideas through description
- Organise writing appropriately - by using the correct grammar and other organisational features
- Use paragraphs - by understanding how to group ideas
- Use sentences appropriately - by using different types of sentences for clarity and effect
- Present writing - by learning to reflect upon writing and reading their writing aloud to others
- Analyse writing - by understanding how grammatical choices give effect and meaning to writing.
The Write Stuff Approach
As a school we have adopted “The Write Stuff” by Jane Constantine to bring clarity to the mechanics of writing. ‘The Write Stuff’ follows a method called ‘Sentence Stacking’ which refers to the fact that sentences are stacked together and organised to engage
As a school we have adopted “The Write Stuff” by Jane Constantine to bring clarity to the mechanics of writing. ‘The Write Stuff’ follows a method called ‘Sentence Stacking’ which refers to the fact that sentences are stacked together and organised to engage children with short, intensive moments of learning that they can then immediately apply to their own writing.
Key benefits of The Write Stuff:
Support for teachers so that they have a deeper and more flexible knowledge of sentence structure.
- Pupils who understand how to apply sentence scaffolds to their independent writing as they develop their expertise.
- Standards improve because many worked examples are provided over the year that extend understanding through a wide range of genres and non-fiction text types.
- Children have a clear view of what high quality writing looks like and their learning is structured clearly and misconceptions dealt with.
- Pupils know how to improve their writing and make it more focussed and actionable feedback is provided to guide their learning.
- Children have a concept of how to build, plan and complete a piece of writing due to narrative maps and non-fiction shapes.
- Teachers have clear pathways of how to guide pupils in weak areas such as cohesion and paragraphs.
The Write Stuff is based on two guiding principles; teaching sequences that slide between experience days and sentence stacking lessons. With modelling at the heart of them, the sentence stacking lessons are broken into bite-sized chunks and taught under the structural framework of The Writing Rainbow. Teachers prepare children for writing by modelling the ideas, grammar or techniques of writing.
An individual lesson is based on a sentence model, broken in to 3 learning chunks. Each learning chunk has three sections:
- Initiate section – a stimulus to capture the children’s imagination and set up a sentence.
- Model section – the teacher close models a sentence that outlines clear writing features and techniques.
- Enable section – the children write their sentence, following the model.
- Children are challenged to ‘Deepen the Moment’ which requires them to independently draw upon previously learnt skills and apply them to their writing during that chunk.
"The Write Stuff" uses three essential components to support children in becoming great writers.
The three zones of writing :-
IDEAS - The FANTASTICs uses a child friendly acronym to represent the nine idea lenses through which children can craft their ideas.
TOOLS - The GRAMMARISTICS. The grammar rules of our language system and an accessible way to target weaknesses in pupils grammatical and linguistic structures.
TECHNIQUES - The BOOMTASTICs which helps children capture 10 ways of adding drama and poetic devices to writing in a vivid visual.
We have clear progression across all genres of writing, ensuring we are building on key writing skills year on year.
Spelling
Spelling at Our School
At our school, we believe that spelling is a vital part of becoming a successful writer. Accurate spelling allows children to communicate their ideas clearly and confidently, while also supporting their reading, vocabulary development and overall literacy. We provide a carefully sequenced spelling curriculum that builds on children's phonics knowledge and develops them into fluent, confident spellers.
Year 2: Little Wandle Spelling
Once children have successfully completed the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised phonics programme, they begin Little Wandle Spelling in Year 2. This programme is specifically designed to bridge the gap between phonics and spelling, helping children apply their phonics knowledge to increasingly complex spelling patterns and rules. Pupils develop their understanding of how words are constructed, learn common spelling conventions and begin to make informed spelling choices in their writing.
Alongside this, there is a strong focus on mastering high-frequency words and common exception words, ensuring that children can spell the most commonly used words accurately and automatically. This supports greater fluency in both writing and reading.
Years 3 to 6: Spelling Shed
From Year 3 onwards, children follow the Spelling Shed programme. This engaging and comprehensive scheme covers all of the spelling requirements set out in the National Curriculum. Weekly learning focuses on spelling patterns, rules, morphology and etymology, enabling children to understand not only how words are spelled but also why they are spelled that way.
Children also learn and revisit the statutory spelling word lists for Years 3 and 4 and Years 5 and 6. Regular opportunities to practise, apply and revisit these words help pupils build accuracy, confidence and automaticity in their spelling.
Spelling Shed provides a structured progression that revisits and builds upon previous learning, helping children to retain knowledge over time. Through regular practice, investigation and application within their writing, pupils develop confidence, accuracy and fluency in spelling.
Our Approach
Across the school, spelling is taught explicitly and practised regularly. We encourage children to:
Apply spelling patterns and rules accurately.
- Use their phonics knowledge to support spelling choices.
- Master high-frequency and common exception words in Key Stage 1.
- Learn and retain the statutory spelling word lists in Key Stage 2.
- Develop independence when spelling unfamiliar words.
- Edit and improve their own writing by checking spellings carefully.
- Apply spelling knowledge consistently across the curriculum.
By providing a clear progression from phonics to spelling, we aim to ensure that all children become confident, fluent spellers who have the knowledge, skills and strategies needed to succeed as writers throughout their education and beyond.