Reading and Writing

Reading

At Kingsway we believe that all of our children can become confident, fluent readers who take pleasure in reading and read to learn. Beginning in Early Years, we teach phonics using Essential Letter and Sounds, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. Once children are secure in their phonics and move through the school, we further build on their range of decoding strategies so that they build up good pace and fluency when reading. Children are taught how to confidently tackle any unfamiliar words and read them carefully.

At Kingsway, we know Reading is a vital life skill that supports good spelling, writing, and gives our children the best outcomes in secondary education and as adults. By the time children leave us, they can read confidently for purpose as well as reading for pleasure.

Writing

At Kingsway, we aim to help our children develop into articulate and confident communicators, who are well-equipped with the basic skills they need. We aim to ensure all of our children develop a genuine love of language and the written word, through a text-based approach. Children also enjoy learning through the contexts of carefully chosen novels that they will find particularly interesting or be able to relate to in some way. Developing skills through the novel approach provides children with the opportunity to read a broader range of texts and to make links between them. New vocabulary is explored and key questions are asked to develop understanding of story plots and characters. Throughout these units children enjoy writing in a variety of styles that help them to respond to the text and explore it further. Children find these units of work inspiring both for their reading and writing which is wonderful to see.

Careful links are made across the curriculum to ensure that children’s learning is relevant and meaningful: where possible linking our reading, writing and the topic that we are covering in our foundation subjects.

Spelling and Grammar

Spelling and grammar are an extremely important part of the primary curriculum. Within each writing unit, grammar is at the forefront of the learning. Grammar is taught and then children are given the opportunity to apply their skills. This includes understanding a wide range of punctuation, knowing how to identify and write different types of sentences and understanding different types of words and how they are used. Spelling is taught and covers the wide range of spelling rules expected by the end of KS1 and KS2. Spelling Shed is used from Year 2 to support the teaching of spelling.

Handwriting

Writing is an integral part of clear communication. Handwriting is taught to ensure children form letters correctly. Well formed letters and a fluid script supports spelling success and improved writing content. At first children learn how to form letters correctly, then they are taught how to confidently join letters which are consistent in size.

Oracy

Oracy is incredibly important to us at Kingsway Primary School. Preparing our children to be confident, respectful and purposeful speakers is integral to everything that we do.

We are preparing our children for a life in the 21st Century. For the children to be successful in their learning and in their life we truly believe that the ability for them to communicate is key and they need to be taught how to do this. We start by teaching our children the skills to listen to each other. We then aim for the children to ‘learn TO talk’ and give them the confidence, resilience and social skills to communicate to anyone they may meet. In addition, our children also ‘learn THROUGH talk’ to explore curriculum content.