Reading Mission: 

To ensure all children foster a love and enjoyment of reading; discovering adventures and mastering skills for learning and life.

“The journey of a life time starts with the turning of a page.” 

At Fordbridge Community Primary School we fully recognise the importance of reading for both instruction and for pleasure. We embrace all aspects of literature from traditional to modern, to non-fiction and newspapers all in a bid to immerse our children into the world of stories and texts. Horizons are broadened and experiences are embraced along the journey of reading, with new doors opening at every opportunity.

 
Children from reception through to year 6 engage in a recipe of shared and guide reading sessions, using a wide variety of books and resources matched appropriately to their levels of skill and understanding. Throughout the week children are exposed to adult led reading sessions, independent activities and we are continuing to embed the children’s love for reading through enhanced opportunities to read for pleasure. Through a strong phonics based curriculum children in phase one learn decoding and questioning strategies and start to look at comprehension skills needed ready for their next challenge. Within phase two, our children continue to embed key fluency skills, alongside deepening their abilities to infer on character’s perceptions and impressions as a reader though a mixture of whole class and shared reading opportunities. Our phase three children continue to experience both whole class reading and inference based activities, with the aim of developing a deeper understanding and through small group work a wider breadth of children’s literature. 

Throughout all of our guided reading sessions, across all phases, teacher led discussion take place, which require the children to take an active and reciprocal role within the reading sessions, skills such as retrieving and inferring information to determine author intent or a character’s perception are taught and embedded, alongside making thoughtful reflections or comments relating to the text layout or purpose. The children at Fordbridge regularly read plays, stories, biographies, poetry and non-fiction texts as part of their progressive reading journey. 

Children are informally assessed on an ongoing basis during reading sessions, which accumulates into moderated judgements being made each half term, supported by both our local teaching trust and the local authority. A combination of formal reading tests and a reading age analysis are also conducted termly to ensure the accuracy of provision for every child at Fordbridge. Reading is rigorously monitored to ensure the up keep of high expectations and continually build on opportunities to reflect and improve. Teaching staff receive support and professional development opportunities on an appropriate basis to ensure improvement and refinement of practice. 

From nursery onwards, children are set the regular expectation to continue their reading journey at home; we offer a wide range of banded reading books for the children to access and chose themselves, as well as a fantastic online reading buddy scheme to encourage and extend their knowledge of literature. Together with parents, as a community, we recognise the importance and impact of reading for the children at Fordbridge Community Primary School.

Writing Mission: 

To ensure all children foster enthusiasm and purpose for writing, producing and mastering skills for learning and life.

“You can make anything by writing. It’s a never ending journey of exploration.” 

At Fordbridge, the journey to becoming a confident and meaningful writer starts in Nursery. We fully appreciate that before our children can be expected to pick up a pen or pencil and engage well with writing for a purpose, they must first become confident in gross motor skills such as running, jumping and climbing – all of which are fundamental movement skills. The journey to the page begins through carefully considered play opportunities that foster meaningful social interaction and language. Before children can write, they must be able to articulate their wonderful imaginations, at Fordbridge we foster a language rich curriculum through our Read, Write, Inc. phonics provision, where adults and children engage in modelled talk and partner interaction. This is first key step in them becoming accomplished young writers. Teachers in Early Years and KS1, model daily how to write (and read) different letters and sounds, building up to increasingly complex words, captions, sentences and beyond through a thorough and deepening English curriculum based on the Read, Write Inc. phonics programme. 

Writing across all phases, is taught through carefully selected texts that motivate and inspire our children to pick up a pencil and get involved, Writing takes place on a daily basis, with children engaging in a variety of writing opportunities across a unit of work. As the unit progresses children are challenged to write at length demonstrating the key skills modelled and discussed during lessons, as part of the writing process. The children are taken on a real life writer’s journey through planning, drafting, editing and finally publishing. Teachers use carefully selected criteria to determine each child’s current levels of ability, this then enables us to track each child’s progress, and offer further challenge or support where necessary. Writing judgements are regularly moderated at Fordbridge to ensure the very highest standards of accuracy.

Our children are encouraged to write a range of genres across all year groups, with our most able children being given the opportunities to choose their genre for the intended audience. Fordbridge takes pride in the vast range of genres and writing opportunities that the children publish and enter as part of national competitions, the children continue to flourish in every challenge they are given. 

Fordbridge’s aim is for all of children, irrespective of background or ability, to be imaginative and enthusiastic writers; to be able to write with accurate grammar alongside appropriate style and flair. Our children are writers.  

English

Children have a varied and creative approach to English at Fordbridge. Throughout Reception, Year1 and Year2 children follow the RWI programme, where they learn phonics, reading for fluency and comprehension, letter formation, spelling, vocabulary and sentence skills. They also have two creative writing lessons per week in order to enhance their writing and to ensure our children have lots of writing opportunities. In addition to these English lessons, Guided Reading lessons take place everyday.

When the children have completed the RWI programme during year 2 they then move onto the English curriculum. Years 3 - 6 also follow the overview above. Each half term, the children complete a different unit of work based around a novel, visual literacy or a unit linked to their theme. During each unit of work, children will have opportunities to produce a variety of different writing for different purposes. We ensure our English lessons are fun, creative and develop children's writing and spelling skills each day. Children in years 3-6 also have guided reading lessons four times a week and a handwriting lesson at least once a week.

Please find below documents to support the progression of writing for Years 1 - 6:

RWI - Read Write Inc Phonics

Here at Fordbridge Primary we use the Read Write Inc (RWI) programme to get children off to a flying start with their reading. RWI is a method of learning centred around a systematic approach to letter sounds and phonics, and we use it to aid children in their reading and writing.

Reading opens the door to learning. A child who reads a lot will become a good reader. A good reader will be able to read more challenging material. A child who reads challenging material is a child who will learn. The more a child learns, the more he or she will want to find out.

Using RWI, the children learn to read effortlessly so that they can put all their energy into comprehending what they read. It also allows them to spell effortlessly so that they can put all their energy into composing what they write.

When using RWI to read the children will:

• learn that sounds are represented by written letters

• learn 44 sounds and the corresponding letter/letter groups using simple picture prompts

• learn how to blend sounds

• learn to read words using Fred Talk

• read lively stories featuring words they have learned to sound out

• show that they comprehend the stories by answering questions.

When using RWI to write the children will: 

• learn to write the letters/letter groups which represent 44 sounds.

• learn to write words by saying the sounds in Fred Talk

• write simple sentences

• Use adventurous vocabulary within their writing

Spelling at Fordbridge Primary

 Spelling Shed  (new edition) for Years 1 to 6 has been specially created to meet the higher demands of the new curriculum spelling appendix.

• Spelling rules and concepts are introduced by aliens from an exciting online spelling hive.
• A range of fun activities teach children adventurous words and build their confidence, looking at morphology and meanings of complex words. 
• Every child’s progress is recorded in pupil's SPaG books. 
• Children are prepared for the spelling component of the Key Stage 1 and 2 statutory assessments.

During phase 1 children will learn to spell through RWI phonics and a key word approach.