Our Learning Sequences

Phonics and Spelling

Phonics is taught through the ‘Sounds-Write’ programme from Reception through to Year 2 allowing children to hear, identify and use sounds to allow them to spell successfully. Spellings are sent home on a weekly basis for all children from Year 1 to Year 6, building on the spelling patterns that they are learning in school.

Reading

Through their time at school, we want all children to develop a love of reading, to have a broad vocabulary and have the skills to read and understand a wide range of texts. Across their lessons, children are exposed to a wide range of high- quality texts and are given many opportunities to explore these through a variety of exciting activities. Children have weekly reading lessons which focus on a specific reading skill and allow children to build upon skills learnt in previous years. In Reception and KS1, children regularly read with an adult in school to help them establish their phonic knowledge and decoding skills. In KS2, children build upon their reading fluency and comprehension through the Accelerated Reader programme on a daily basis. This is an excellent scheme that motivates children to read at their level and allows teachers to carefully monitor the progress of every child. Every class also has a daily story time to promote reading for pleasure.

Writing

We aim for our children to become confident and proficient writers to allow them to express themselves in a variety of genres. As children progress through the school, we build on their knowledge to give them the necessary skills in planning, drafting and editing work effectively. Children begin their writing journey in Reception and Talk for Writing is used in KS1 as an effective approach to introduce children to writing longer pieces of work. When children leave KS2, children will be confident in their writing style and will have the necessary writing skills for the next stage in their education.

To capture the children’s imagination we always ensure that our writing topics are relevant and interesting and where possible, link this with our Topic work by subject or through the use of high-quality texts. Building on the vocabulary they learn through reading, we prioritise using excellent vocabulary in our writing by using Word of the Week. Grammar is taught on a weekly basis and children are then given the opportunity to embed this new learning in their writing each week.