Reading Intent

Reading is at the heart of our curriculum, a crucial part of our daily experience and is essential for developing educational and social progress. It is our vision to ensure every child achieves their full potential to become confident, enthusiastic readers and diverse, understanding members of society. As inspiring role models of literature, it is our intention to nurture a love of reading, to immerse children in high quality texts, and to develop a thirst for discovery. We strive to cultivate a community with strong abilities in both the spoken and written word, therefore the acquisition of language and vocabulary is of the utmost importance and underpins our regular meaningful discussions and explicit teaching of reading skills.

How We Teach Your Children to Read and Write

Every child deserves success right from the start. We know that the sooner children learn to read, the greater their success at school. This is why we put reading at the heart of what we do.

Phonics, Reading and Spelling

In Nursery and Reception the children learn phonics through the Jolly Phonics scheme.  This continues into Key Stage 1 with further work planned around Letters and Sounds.  The Nessy online program is used to support and supplement phonics and spelling.

The results of the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check have been significantly above the national average for the past four years.

Jolly Phonics phonically decodable books are used alongside Heinemann Storyworld reading books in Reception.

Book Talk

Each child receives quality reading lessons each week to develop specific reading skills, including fluency and confidence when reading aloud. This is delivered through our Book Talk Jane Considine's Reading Rainbow.

The Writing Process

It is expected that children will be given as many opportunities as possible to use and apply their writing skills across all text types and across the whole curriculum. Teachers plan for this accordingly using The Stour Federation Partnership's Writing Process.

Vocabulary underpins our curriculum and it is at the heart of every subject we teach. Although we recognise that reading is invaluable for learning new language, we cannot assume that the more words you read, the more words you know. In The Stour Federation Partnership, we teach vocabulary explicitly and then revisit and revise words learned. This way, the children know the words in depth - meaning that they can use them in a variety of contexts, in writing, speaking and reading. 
 
Every year, we subscribe to No More Marking, an online Comparative Judgement system, which allows our staff to collaborate with thousands of other schools in judging writing from years 1-6. By uploading and assessing our children's writing in six national judging windows, we are able to get whole-school and nationally benchmarked data, allowing us to save time, support progression and intervention planning and tailor feedback. With all our teachers and teaching assistants knowing what good quality writing looks like across the school, we have high expectations and a shared understanding of next steps. 

Writing Intent

To enable all children to find their voice by equipping them with the knowledge and skills needed to express themselves clearly and accurately through spoken and written language. We expose our learners to a variety of stimuli and experiences so that they can build confidence and showcase their imaginations and abilities through a range of writing styles. Children always start writing through the exploration of high-quality texts. This is underpinned by explicit vocabulary teaching, grammar, punctuation and sentence level work. From initial mark-making to precise text shaping, our children become authors by writing with both audience and purpose in mind.