At Twydall, our aim is for all of our children to become confident and fluent readers and writers with highly developed articulacy skills and a rich and varied bank of vocabulary to support them achieve in the next phase of their education. We do this by providing engaging and motivating texts, opportunities for writing across the curriculum and by developing oracy through a variety of experiences and with different audiences. We aim for our pupils to gain not only a love of reading, but also to read for pleasure and dive into a world where they are able to explore their creativity and be encouraged to become writers themselves.  

Implementation:

Each term, the pupils are exposed to a new text which they explore in both reading and writing lessons. By having a new focus text each term, this provides our pupils with opportunities to learn from not only a range of authors, but also about a variety of world issues and discussion topics. With this in mind, the texts provided range between big issues around the world, war and conflict, sci fi/fantasy, authors around the world and local/British authors. Within the texts they study, the pupils are exposed to a range of different writing genres which are specifically catered to their year group and Key Stage requirements.  

At Twydall Primary School, every child is given the best start to early reading through the Read Write Inc Phonics scheme which incorporates both reading and writing and for those pupils who have difficulty accessing reading and writing, RWI Fresh Start interventions are in place to support this in UKS2. Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar are integrated within their English lessons as well as being taught discretely alongside handwriting evolution. Throughout each Key Stage, we take every opportunity available to apply a progressive approach to English skills through the specific links between reading and writing lessons along with cross curricular links. These being where pupils will have extended writing opportunities as well as unpicking texts and events using key sentence stems to support them.  

At Twydall, we strongly encourage our children to become proficient at editing and improving their own work and support their peers to do the same. This is developed throughout the school with the use of purple pens which are used to give children the responsibility and confidence to adapt their work and enjoy seeing the end result.  

Impact:

We aim to ensure that all pupil’s attainment and progress in both Reading and Writing are in line with or exceed their potential. Through regular assessment against the National Curriculum, the pupils are then highlighted with the support needed to help them achieve the best they can. This is then implemented through interventions and pupil conferencing to build an open and trusting dialogue between teacher and pupil to feedback on the next steps. Children have clear next steps and we aim for them to leave every lesson knowing what they have achieved and where they will be moving on in their journey the next day and in turn, throughout their English learning journey in school. We wish for our pupils to be able to write a range of structures cohesively, solidify their comprehension skills and maintain a clear level of spelling, grammar and punctuation.  

Please find below some fantastic links for resources and reading information: