English

At Wallands, we are passionate about fostering a life-long love of language and literature in our pupils. As such, we centre our reading and writing lessons around high quality texts which inspire, excite and engage our children.

Reading

Reading is at the heart of school life here at Wallands:

• Stories are shared in every class, every day, with children and adults engaging in rich discussions together.
• Each year group has a purposefully selected reading spine, promising the great texts pupils will enjoy that year and ensuring that every child experiences an excellent and diverse range of literature.

English lessons are my favourite because I love reading and writing. My favourite class book was ‘The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane’ because it was adventurous, with great characters and it was an unusual story. Ella Year 4 

• Reading Spine Reception
• Reading Spine Year 1
• Reading Spine Year 2
• Reading Spine Year 3 4 2021
• Reading Spine year 3 4 2022
• Reading Spine year 5
• Reading Spine year 6

• Teachers share their enthusiasm, skills and knowledge in daily, taught reading sessions. In KS1, this teaching is through explicit guided reading lessons where children read phonically decodable books at their level. In KS2 it is through the delivery of our Destination Reader program. Children are taught to develop key reading skills including prediction, inference, retrieval, sequencing, evaluating and summarising.

• Children are given phonically decodable books to practise their reading skills at home. These books are pitched to be the perfect level for your child, and to help them build their confidence, independence and enjoyment of reading. The school is well resourced with book areas in each classroom, a KS1 library, a KS2 library and a hidden book nook for quiet reading.

Writing

At Wallands, we aim to provide pupils with rich writing experiences which foster their creativity and empowers them as writers.

• Writing lessons centre around high-quality texts. These capture pupil interest and provide great models for developing their understanding of authorial choices and devices.
• The school follows the principles behind ‘The Write Stuff’ approach in order to bring clarity to the mechanics of writing. This approach integrates teacher modelling, supported pupil practice and independent writing, helping children to become confident and innovative writers.
• Pupils are encouraged to see writing as a journey and are given time and support to edit, improve and redraft their work.
• Writing is audience focused and purposeful and children are given opportunities to write for a range of different purposes across the curriculum.
• We aim for pupils to develop quick, clear, flowing handwriting which enables them to flourish in their written work. We encourage them to take pride in their work and presentation.

  I take ideas from reading books for my writing. Lucas Year 2

   Our writing curriculum

  Year 1 writing curriculumYear 2 writing curriculumYear 3 writing curriculumYear 4 writing curriculumYear 5 writing curriculumYear 6 writing curriculum 

Spelling

All pupils at Wallands receive a weekly lesson dedicated to learning spelling patterns and rules. In EYFS and Year 1, these sessions are more phonics focused and children are taught to blend sounds to read and to segment words to spell. At the same time, they learn words which are not phonically regular such as the common exception words. From Year 2 and into KS2, children move towards using their phonic knowledge to help them to understand spelling rules and patterns.

Children are also regularly tested on their statutory spelling list for their year groups. This information is shared with you at home so that you can help your child learn these spellings and see their progress.