Harmans Water Primary School

The teaching of reading begins in our Nursery, where children are introduced to the individual sounds. We follow the Read Write Inc phonics programme to teach early reading skills and, from Reception, children are taught sounds, letters and words in small groups every day. All of KS1 also have daily phonics lessons, with children being grouped according to their needs. Once the children have mastered phonics and can read fluently, they engage in daily reading sessions based around a high quality text.

Those children in KS2 who need continued phonics support have access to Fresh Start, an age appropriate scheme by Read Write Inc, and some children take part in daily phonics lessons if more appropriate.

Through phonics, we aim to:

• Introduce an interest in reading and writing from an early age.
• Equip children with the fundamental understanding of early reading and writing.
• Ensure children are confident and with the skills to segment and blend a range of words, allowing them to access the full curriculum with ease.
• To impact the children’s ability to understand the world around them from an early age.
• Give children the confidence to attempt phonetically plausible writing.

We ensure the children have opportunities to explore their love of reading. Each class holds a weekly book club session; this is where favourite books are discussed, new books are explored and other reading-related activities occur, depending on what the class choose. We also have a reading for pleasure reading spine, where the teachers read these books to the children in their daily storytime. In addition, each year group, starting from Nursery, have a reading challenge list. These are high quality books we recommend are read each year, and the children have access to these in school, as well as if they want to read them at home. Our class book cases support children with reading a range of books, from graphic novels, to poetry and non-fiction. Each class has a weekly visit to our school library, where the children can take books from here to read in school and at home. As a school, we take part in reading events like World Book Day each year to celebrate the importance of reading.

In addition to reading for pleasure, we dedicate time to the teaching of reading comprehension. This could be through book talk, discussions, or written responses to a text. There is dedicated time each day to the teaching of comprehension. This could be through English lessons, or cross-curricular, and can also be through time allocated to developing reading skills, such as during ERIC (Everyone Reads In Class) sessions.

Handwriting is taught using the Nelson handwriting scheme. For Reception, the children complete their learning using workbooks. For Years 1-6, the children begin to develop their handwriting in lined exercise books. We prioritise handwriting as part of the early writing curriculum; in Reception and KS1, handwriting is taught daily. In Years 3 and 4, handwriting is taught three times a week, with it being taught in one longer session a week in Years 5 and 6. 

As part of the Read Write Inc phonics programme, letter formation is taught as the sounds are learnt. Below is a video to support with how we teach children to accurately form their letters.

The teaching of writing relates closely to the teaching of reading and our project-based curriculum. Our writing curriculum has been designed in order to:

• Empower children by giving value and meaning to their mark making.
• Develop the thoughtfulness and imagination of young writers across the curriculum.
• Inspire children’s creativity through the high quality texts and authors studied to support their writing.
• Build children’s confidence through the understanding of manipulating grammar and punctuation within their own writing.
• Develop pride and ownership for presentation of pieces the children have worked hard on and engaged with.
• Support and increase children’s ability to reflect critically, looking at their own, others and authors’ pieces.

Children from Year 1 are also given the opportunity to take part in 'free writes' where they can write freely and explore language, vocabulary, sentence structure and different text types independently.

We have designed our writing curriculum to ensure children move through three phases of writing: an introduction to the writing unit and experiences that link to this, writing with scaffolded support from an adult or whole class shared write, and then a chance to write indepedently, incorporating everything learnt through the two phases before. We give children real-life purposes for their writing, encourage creativity and imagination, and provide opportunities for writing across the curriculum. 

EYFS and Year 1 focus on the high frequency words, alongside phonics, when teaching spelling. Years 2 - 6 use the Jane Considine approach to teaching spelling each week. Our aims with spelling are:

• To enable children to communicate effectively with others through the ability to spell a range of vocabulary.
• To have the confidence to attempt unfamiliar, high level vocabulary, using spelling strategies in addition to phonics.
• To be able to apply knowledge of suffixes and prefixes to alter meaning.
• To understand how to apply spelling rules to a range of words and make links between them.

Children are also given a personalised spelling list to learn, which supports them with the words they are currently developing their accuracy with.

Oracy is interweaven between the other strands of the English curriculum, as well as within other subjects, across the school. Our aims are to:

• Prepare children with the ability to present confidently their ideas, opinions and thoughts across a range of subjects
• Develop a rich vocabulary during formal and informal language development opportunities.

We feel it is important that every child is heard, and that they have the opportunity to develop their speaking and listening skills, whether it is through exploratory and/or presentational talk. Activities and throught-through tasks in lessons support with the development of Oracy skills.