The TrinityCofE Primary Academy

Learning to read is one of the most important things your child will learn at our school. Everything else depends on it, so we put as much energy as possible into making sure that every single child learns to read as quickly as possible.

We want your child to love reading – and to want to read for themselves. This is why we work hard to make sure children develop a love of books as well as simply learning to read. Developing a love of reading supports mental health, developing a greater sense of empathy and improving social skills

We start by teaching phonics in Reception, following the Sounds Write approach (more information can be found in the 'Phonics' section of our website). A great importance is placed on early reading, and the children have phonetically decodable books along with 'reading for pleasure books' that they take home with them daily. These give the children lots of opportunity to practice the skills they are learning in school, as well as giving the children freedom to choose books that inspire a love of reading. 

Teachers also regularly read to the children, ensuring they get to know and love all sorts of stories, poetry and information books. This helps to extend children’s vocabulary and comprehension, as well as supporting their writing. Within Early Years and Key Stage One, class reading is largely taught through 'Book Talk' with a transition into our Key Stage Two approach in the latter half of Year 2. 

As the children move up through the school they are taught reading skills through a Whole Class Guided Reading lesson. This is supplemented by 1:1 reading with an adult, often the Teacher or Teaching Assistant but also reading volunteers. Our reading lessons use a class text that is matched to the age related expectations for each year group, also providing challenge, through the language, themes and plot. The Teacher works with the whole class and groups of children to develop their vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, evaluation, summarizing and sequencing skills. The focus in these lessons is on "staying in the story", this is done through discussion and careful questioning that builds and supports reading skills. It is through these lessons and an exposure to high quality texts, that we foster and develop both reading comprehension skills but the joy and love of reading.

However as children progress through the school, they record written responses to comprehension style questions to prepare them for the end of Key Stage 2 expectations. All children are supported in accessing the age appropriate text for their year group. If children need additional support with phonics and decoding this support is provided through individualised intervention and tracked by our English lead, Mrs Kate Dummett (kdummett@trinityschooldevizes.dsat.org.uk) 

Our English leader is:

• Mrs Dummett 

• Trinity reading list EYFS
• Trinity reading list YEAR one
• Trinity reading list YEAR two
• Trinity reading list YEAR three
• Trinity reading list YEAR four
• Trinity reading list YEAR five
• Trinity reading list YEAR six

“All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Each term, we plan two units of writing for the children. These units vary depending on the year group.

• Fiction: This should last for approximately three weeks and hinge upon a high quality, immersive text.
• Non- fiction: This should last for approximately 2 weeks and should also hinge upon a high quality text.
• Poetry: Should last approximately 1 week and uses high quality poems from published poets as inspiration.

Our writing approach focuses on the use of high quality texts along with quality first teaching. We follow a carefully mapped out progression that includes National Curriculum objectives. These objectives are linked to various text genres to ensure the children are given multiple opportunities to embed their skills. 

In line with our curriculum drivers of enquiry, communication, independence and community, we aim to create a learning environment through our writing lessons that fosters a love of literature and a deep understanding of vocabulary. 

We use elements of The Write Stuff approach to teaching to support our writing.

Our lesson design follows the same initial format across the school. This ensures our children are exposed to a consistent approach that enables them to develop confidence within their writing as they progress along their educational journey. Within Early Years, the children will begin with oral story telling and use the "Drawing Club" approach to early writing, before beginning to follow this lesson structure as they enter Year One. The diagram below shows an example of our writing lesson structure. 

Here at The Trinity Primary Academy, we want our children to feel proud of their learning and want to share their ideas, thoughts and knowledge. Having neat legible handwriting fosters a sense of pride in their learning, allows others to read their learning and supports error corrections.

Handwriting starts in Early Years, where the children are taught to sit at a table and hold a pencil correctly.

This continues into Key Stage One, where correct letter formation is taught across the curriculum, especially within phonics and where appropriate discrete handwriting lessons using the Letter-join handwriting scheme. 

In Key Stage Two, children are taught handwriting discretely everyday using the Letter-join handwriting scheme.

From Key Stage One, we teach the cursive letter formation using "letter families", the cursive joins are taught from Year Two.

One of the devices we use to support SEND writing and reading is colourful semantics. These can help children visually build a sentence using colour coding for the different parts needed. It helps children build associations, for example 'action' will be associated with yellow within the sentence. A useful parent guide (Credit: Newham speech and language services 2020) is attached.

Some children access writing through the use of 'talk to text'. This is an application available through our iPad's at school that can allow children to orally build a sentence. 

There are other strategies used by individual class teachers that support the teaching and learning of writing across the school. 

• Colourful-Semantics-For-Parents

We know that learning to  spell and seeing yourself as a successful speller is an important part of a child's learning journey. Starting from Early Years and the introduction to phonics through the Sounds Write approach, children are taught that letters represent sounds in words and misconceptions and errors are addressed immediately but the teacher and TA. The children are allowed time to review their spellings and are supported by the teacher or TA to check their spelling against the modelled spelling and through oral rehearsal of the sounds and correct it.

This focused approach through explicit teaching using the Sounds Write approach in phonics continues into Key Stage One, where children are exposed to and taught all of the spellings of the sounds in the English language. 

Key Stage Two also teach spellings using the Sounds Write approach, here the teachers recap and revise the phonemes and their spellings taught in Key Stage One. Suffixes and prefixes are taught, using the same structured approach and a range of polysyllabic words including the spelling lists for each year group are also taught.

Here at Trinity we do not send lists of spellings home to be learnt and then tested, research has shown that this is not an effective way to learn to spell. Your child's teach may send focus word lists home for you to read and practise at home if you wish.