English

Our Subject Leader for Writing is Mr Chisholm

Our Subject Leader for Reading is Mrs Hutton

Curriculum Intent: Why is Writing important at Lythe School?

Writing helps children flourish through giving a means of expression and communication. Being able to clearly communicate what you mean, and inform and influence others is as important as writing for pleasure, and can contribute to wellbeing. Children see a wide variety of examples of quality writing and are build a toolkit of skills in handwriting, spelling, grammar and knowledge of text types and audiences that they can use to express themselves for a variety of purposes throughout the whole curriculum.

Curriculum Intent: Why is Reading important at Lythe School?

We want all children to be readers and for reading to be a “first resort” when looking for information, understanding, entertainment, comfort, or for any of the other reasons why a person may read. A robust early foundation of decoding and fluency leads to good comprehension of a rapidly increasing variety of texts, meaning that children can critically read and draw meaning from a wide range of written sources, both for learning in school and for their future lives. Children learn to talk about their reading and articulate their thoughts and feelings about what they have read, making links and showing discernment in their personal tastes.

Phonics teaching: Read, Write Inc.

Confident, automatic decoding is a firm basis for building fluency and comprehension. All teachers have the highest expectation that children will become proficient readers by the end of Key Stage 1 through our systematic, consistent implementation of our chosen phonic programme Read, Write Inc. The intent of using this method is to:

• Deliver a high-quality systematic synthetic phonics programme of proven effectiveness, which is followed with rigour and fidelity so that children are taught consistently to use phonics as the route to reading unknown words.
• Ensure pace of the phonics programme is maintained so that children become fluent, independent readers by the end of year 1.
• Ensure children’s reading books show a cumulative progression in phonics knowledge that match the grapheme-phoneme correspondences they know to support decoding skills.

Children are regularly assessed and are taught in small groups at their “challenge level” so that they can make the most rapid progress. If a child is not progressing quickly, they will be offered additional teaching to ensure that a gap does not open up between them and their peers. Our aim is that children complete the RWI scheme as quickly as possible and move on to guided reading lessons.

Click here to find out more information about how your child will be introduced to phonics and how you can help them at home.

Click here for the Writing Long Term Plan 2024/25