From Early Years, the children are taught pre-cursive letter formation and this continues through our school with some KS1 children beginning to use continuous cursive for joining their handwriting. For more information about how handwriting is begun in Reception, please see 'Getting our hands ready for writing' on the Reception class page. 

We use the twinkl scheme to teach and practise our handwriting so that everyone becomes a fluent writer. This is done through phonics and handwriting lessons initially and then through other lessons and opportunities.

Our classrooms also have lots of examples of both our teachers writing using continuous cursive or pre-cursive writing as well as printed resources and examples. 

Please see below for an example of each letter written in cursive style.

At Werrington Primary school in Reception, Key Stage 1 and those that need it in KS2, early reading is taught using synthetic phonics as the main approach to reading. Pupils are systematically taught the phonemes (sounds), how to blend the sounds all through the word for reading, and how to segment sounds to enable them to write words.

Children are taught to use their phonic skills and knowledge as their first approach to reading, but are also taught how to read high frequency and common exception words which do not completely follow phonics rules.

We follow Supersonic Phonics Friends scheme to teach phonics.

Children have lots of time and opportunities to practise and expand their ability to read and spell words. They are also taught to read and spell ‘tricky words’, which are the words that have unusual spelling patterns and do not follow the phonics patterns and rules.

 Reception:

The aim of phonics is to foster children’s speaking and listening skills as preparation for learning to read with phonics.

This is when systematic, high quality phonic work begins. During Reception the children learn the Basics 2 and 3 phases:

How to represent each of the forty-two sounds by a letter or a sequence of letters (digraph/ trigraph).

How to blend each of the sounds by a letter or sequence of letters.

Letter names.

How to read and spell some high frequency ‘tricky’  words (eg my you her)

Year 1:

Year 1 teach Basics 4 followed by Choose to Use and Switch it Mitch to ensure consolidation and making links.

Children learn new ways of representing the sounds and practise blending for reading and segmenting for spelling.

Year 2:

 Year 2 are teaching the Supersonic Phonics Friends spelling rule to teach SPaG (Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar) expectations and spelling rules.

During this phase, children become fluent readers and increasingly accurate spellers.

 

At the end of year one, your child will undergo a statutory phonics screening check. This is a statutory assessment which began in 2012.

All children in year one must take the check and any year two children who did not meet the expected standard in the previous year will take the check again.

The phonics screening check is designed to confirm whether or not individual children have learnt phonics decoding to the appropriate standard.

We provide parents with phonics packs to provide further details about the check.

We LOVE reading at Werrington Primary School as we believe it is a gateway to progress in all areas of the curriculum! It also opens up a fantastic imaginary world to enter and explore! Each class encourages reading at all ages and all children are encouraged to read with an adult, individually or in peer groups each week. 

To ensure that children develop reading skills that allows them to be fluent readers we have selected the CUSP Reading Curriculum because it is carefully structured and provides a knowledge-rich reading curriculum. The CUSP Reading Curriculum is a highly sequenced, evidence-based approach that ensures reading is explicitly taught, practised, and embedded at every stage of a child's education.

We have a fantastic selection of different class texts for each year group, where the children have their own copy to look through and read along with the class and teacher. This way, the children all experience texts that are challenging, stimulating and engaging with their peers. These texts have been chosen because of their amazing storylines, thought-provoking messages or interesting vocabulary. We read these during our English lessons or through our Whole Class Reading sessions.          

In Reception and Year 1, the children have books are phonetically decodable and link with the children's learning.  They read these alongside the chosen class text.

In addition to their classroom texts, in Year 2, the children work their way through different coloured book bands depending on their ability, fluency and the Phonics Phase that they are working at. These books will also be phonetically decodable and use appropriate sight vocabularly.

In KS2, we further support class reading by moving on to the Accelerated Reader Scheme. We have a huge variety of books (including fiction and non-fiction) across all of levels, which children can choose from. In this scheme, there is a book quiz linked to each book so that once the children have read their book they can take a book quiz to check their comprehension and recall. Books from home are also likely to be on the Accelerated Reader Scheme so if you find a book that you would love to read let your class teacher know and they can check for you!

In Early Years and Key Stage 1, much of the focus is on phonics. As children move through the school, they will begin to focus more on spelling rules and patterns in lessons linked to the national curriculum.

As part of the National Curriculum children are expected to learn compulsory lists of spellings – usually ones which are used a lot or may be tricky to spell. It is expected that all children will be able to spell these words by the time they leave school in Year 6. We are teaching the Y3/4/5/6 lists through our regular spelling, punctuation and grammar lessons.

In addition there are two sets of high frequency words and common exception words which are taught in KS1. By the beginning of Year 3 all children should be able to spell the words on these lists. These word lists can be found below.

The children have weekly spelling tests and these will contain both high frequency words and words which have specific spelling rules. We use Spelling Shed as a new initiative to help our children with their spelling. Each child has a personal log in and will be assigned their own spellings to practice along with other lists that may become available. The children can access their Spelling Shed account both in and out of school to practice their spellings. If you are unsure of your child's log in then please ask their class teacher. 

Spelling is an essential life skill and we commit to ensuring all of our children have the opportunity to access this skill. Practising spellings at home is a fantastic way to help your child develop their learning further.

Alongside the CUSP Reading Curriculum, we use the CUSP Writing Curriculum. This provides us with a suite of resources that teach the foundations of sentence composition and manipulation so that children have a strong start in every year group.

CUSP writing is an evidence-informed, carefully sequenced English curriculum, which maps core content in writing across the primary year groups. Through each unit, children are exposed to a high-quality model text, which helps them understand how to write the type of text expected of them. 

The most fundamental goal of the National Curriculum for English is for children to learn to communicate and engage with the world around them confidently and effectively.  Our ambition is that pupils will learn to do so meaningfully and with purpose. We use CUSP Writing curriculum because it has been deliberately built to ensure that all pupils, regardless of their starting points, access a high-quality diet of learning. We know that sometimes, we need to make adaptations to the way learning is presented to ensure that pupils experience success. These adaptations may be related to individual pupils’ SEND but they may also be useful for pupils who just need a little extra help to master the content of the curriculum.