Our Intent
By the time our children leave Mullion Primary School, they will be motivated and enthusiastic readers who read both for enjoyment and to find things out. We teach children to read and to keep them reading through a coordinated and progression approach that promotes fluency and a love of reading. We will introduce them to current and classic authors and teach reading through a range of genres. We will develop readers who discuss and give opinions about what they have read.
We use ‘The Write Stuff’ as an approach for writing. This is a combination of experience lessons (to build vocabulary and first-hand experiences) and Sentence Stacking lessons (where vocabulary is used and sentences are crafted through the use of the Writing Rainbow).
We teach as we mean to progress – starting with the Read Write Inc phonics-based approach and continuing through the Read Write Inc spellings programme. We have a school-wide spelling strategy that is taught and applied in writing and editing.
As a school, we follow a continuous cursive handwriting progression of skills once the children are able to form letters correctly. Children are taught handwriting each week and given opportunities for practice. Handwriting standards are expected across the curriculum. From Reception class, children are taught correct letter formation in line with the Read Write Inc patter which supports letter formation.
Teachers use half-termly PAGES (Punctuation and Grammar Essential Skills) to ensure year group objectives are covered and learnt. Grammar and punctuation are also taught through writing, where it is the focus of the success criteria as lenses from the Writing Rainbow.
We teach phonics and early reading through the Read Write Inc programme. This is a systematic synthetic phonics programme where children are grouped at stage not age. The children read decodable books matched to their stage of reading. They read books that they can read.
Skills of reading are taught through the VIPERS (Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval, Summary). In EYFS and key stage one, this is through Talk for Stories. In key stage two, this is taught through short reading extracts shaped around a weekly theme and a once per week class reading book talk lesson.
