St Theresa's Catholic Primary School

English - Reading

At St. Theresa's, we follow the Little Wandles Letters and Sounds Revised scheme for teaching phonics which is supported by an extensive range of decodable reading books.  Pupils in Nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 have daily phonics lessons.

Please visit our Early Reading and Phonics website page to find out more.

When children are able to decode books, they move on to reading books for understanding.  We assess pupils' understanding to ensure that the reading book they have is at the most appropriate level.  Children are encouraged to read everyday at home and at school and a digital library is provided in addition to the school library.

Books are really important to our curriculum.  Every topic has a related book which is the basis for our English curriculum.  Throughout their time at school pupils experience a range of books.  Each classroom has a reading river which displays the books they will encounter throughout the year. Below are some of our reading rivers.

Speaking and listening are key parts of everything we do at St. Theresa's and runs through all of our lessons whether through questioning, paired talk, group discussion or opportunities to perform, we encourage our pupils to listen and speak.  We run a range of interventions to support pupils and immerse pupils in language.  

Click here for the English Policy

We follow the National Curriculum for English

To support spelling, we follow the guidance set out in the National Curriculum, use a range of creative spelling activities and use a digital resource - Readiwriter.

Click on the links to access spelling lists.

Year 1/2   Year 3/4   Year 5/6

We follow a bespoke handwriting scheme to build quality, consistency and stamina in children's writing. 

We follow a writing sequence which begins by immersing the children in the text, analyses the key features of the text, focuses in on spelling, punctuation and grammar, supports pupils to plan a text, write and edit a piece of writing which is then published and shared with the whole school on our WhiteGold displays and finally review the writing.

We write at length across a variety of subjects and pupils' writing is assessed using our steps to success.