Reading

Learning to read is one of the most important things your child will learn at our school. As it has a huge impact on learning in other curriculum areas and expanding creativity, we strive for all children to be avid readers who read fluently, widely and express preferences about the texts that they read by the time they leave our school. 

We teach reading by using elements of Read Write Inc.  This is an exciting and extremely successful programme of literacy teaching, which rapidly develops children’s reading and, in turn, writing skills. We start by teaching phonics to the children as early as Nursery. This means that they learn how to ‘read’ the sounds in words and how those sounds can be written down. These skills are then developed in Reception and Key Stage One where all children receive a daily high quality phonics lesson. 

In Key Stage Two, children take part in a daily whole class guided reading lesson where the children focus on specific reading domains and this enables them to become reading experts. ln these comprehension and inference lessons, the children are taught the wider skills of reading with the support of a teacher. They are given the opportunity to look at texts in more depth and practise a range of reading skills to support their development. Take a look at some of our reading domain question stems that we use at St. Mary's at the bottom of this page.

Our school believes in developing a reading rich culture and we do this successfully through our excellently stocked library, welcoming book corners and WOW days where we inspire all children to unleash their imagination and get lost in a book.

As parents, we ask you to please read with your child on a daily basis and encourage them to read for pleasure at home too!

Writing

Here at St. Mary's, we believe that in order to write to a high standard, children need to be exposed to high-quality texts. It is our intention to immerse pupils within a text for them to fully understand the vocabulary and structure. At our school, children are able to embed the skills from the National Curriculum throughout the year in cross curricular writing opportunities as all our English writing lessons are based upon texts which have strong links to our current history and geography topics. This enables most children achieve the objectives at the expected standard and some can have the building blocks to achieve the greater depth standard. 

Our writing lessons in Key Stage Two follow a two-week writing progression cycle including lessons on:

• Familiarisation with genre;
• Capturing ideas and vocabulary;
• Supported writing incorporating grammar;
• Big writes using structured success criteria;
• Editing and improving writing.

We expect, encourage and model joined legible handwriting to ensure children present their work neatly and with a sense of pride. Handwriting and fine motor skills are taught throughout the school in line with our handwriting policy.

Spelling

Your child can practise their spellings at home using Spelling Shed. Ask your child's teacher for their Username and Password so they can become a spelling star! It is such a fun app and they will  become a word wizard in no time at all!