Phonics

At Tudor Court, we use the Read Write Inc. (RWI) phonics programme to help children learn to read, write and spell with confidence. Through well-paced, engaging daily lessons, children learn the sounds that letters make and how to blend these sounds together to read words.

Our phonics journey begins in Nursery, where children develop the essential foundations for reading through a wide range of language-rich, play-based experiences. The importance of early skills such as rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, sound discrimination and oral blending is sometimes overlooked, yet these are vital building blocks for later success in phonics. Through songs, stories, games and structured speaking and listening activities, children learn to hear and identify sounds in words, recognise patterns in language and begin to blend sounds together orally. During the Summer Term, children who are ready are introduced to the first stages of Read Write Inc., helping to ensure a smooth transition into Reception and formal phonics teaching.

In Reception and Key Stage 1, phonics is taught through a consistent daily structure, outlined below:

Each lesson begins with a short Speed Sounds session, where children learn and practise new sounds and review those they have already been taught. This is followed by a Storybook session.

In Storybook sessions, children read the same carefully matched book throughout the week. This ensures that they are familiar with the key vocabulary and have the phonic knowledge and vocabulary needed to read the text successfully. Comprehension is developed throughout the week as children discuss vocabulary, characters, events and meaning with their teacher and peers.

The first read focuses on decoding unfamiliar words using their phonic knowledge. During the second read, children are encouraged to use ‘Fred in Your Head’ – a Read Write Inc. strategy where children blend sounds together silently in their minds rather than saying each sound aloud. This helps them to read more fluently and automatically. By the third read, children are reading most words at a glance, allowing them to focus on expression, fluency and comprehension. This repeated reading approach helps children become confident, successful readers who understand and enjoy what they are reading.

Children begin by learning the Set 1 Speed Sounds, which provide the foundations for early reading and writing. As they learn these sounds, they are taught how to blend them together to read simple words. Once children can confidently recognise and use all of the Set 1 Speed Sounds, they will bring home a reading book that is carefully matched to their phonic knowledge and can be read independently.

As children progress, they learn the Set 2 Speed Sounds, which introduce longer vowel sounds and enable them to read and spell a wider range of words. In Set 3, children learn the different ways that sounds can be represented in writing through the Set 3 Speed Sounds. This helps them to tackle longer, more complex and multisyllabic words with increasing fluency and accuracy.

Read Write Inc. provides a clear, structured approach that helps children make strong progress while developing a love of reading. We assess all children every six weeks to ensure they are receiving the right level of support and challenge. Following each assessment, parents are informed of their child’s progress and how it compares to the expected standard for that point in the school year. This helps families understand their child’s development and work in partnership with the school to support continued progress.

We recognise that parents play a vital role in supporting their child’s reading and writing development. Working together helps to ensure children make consistent progress and develop confidence as readers. To support families, we offer a range of phonics events throughout Reception and Key Stage 1, including presentations, workshops and informal drop-in sessions. These opportunities help parents understand how phonics is taught in school and provide practical strategies for supporting learning at home.

Reading

At Tudor Court Primary School, reading is at the forefront of school life. All children have the opportunity to be fluent, confident readers who are able to successfully understand and comprehend a variety of texts. We work hard to develop in our children the love of reading, to have a good knowledge of a range of authors and be able to understand more about the world through the knowledge they gain from texts. We expect children to be able to read fluently and with confidence in all areas of the curriculum to prepare them for their future education. In addition to daily lessons in reading, children are given the opportunity to hear an expert read aloud to them during our DEAR times. We understand the importance of parents and carers in supporting their children to develop both word reading and comprehension skills, and so we want to encourage a home-school partnership which enables parents and carers to understand how to enhance the skills being taught in school through good quality texts.

Writing

Writing is a key element to all of our curriculum at Tudor Court Primary School. We intend children to be able to express their thoughts and ideas clearly and creatively through the writing process and this is demonstrated in all subjects and topics linked to our bespoke curriculum. We aim to create writers who can re-read, edit and improve their own writing and enable children to demonstrate the technicalities of the English language through the correct use of grammar, punctuation and spelling.

We have high expectations for presentation and encourage children to take pride in their writing and their ideas – a whole school approach to cursive handwriting sets the basis for this.

For the 2021/2022 academic year, we have adopted “The Write Stuff” by Jane Considine to bring clarity to the mechanics of writing across the whole school. This was after very successful trials in the 2020/2021 school year in Year 2 and Year 6. “The Write Stuff” follows a method called “Sentence Stacking” which refers to the fact that sentences are stacked together and organised to engage children with short, intensive moments of learning that they can then immediately apply to their own writing. An individual lesson is based on a sentence model, broken in to three chunks:

1. Initiate section – a stimulus to capture the children’s imagination and set up a sentence.

2. Model section – the teacher close models a sentence that outlines clear writing features and techniques.

3. Enable section – the children write their sentence, following the model.

This approach also reinforces grammar through the use of:

• The FANTASTICs which summarise the ideas of writing
• The GRAMMARISTICs is a classroom tool that enables the teacher to drive key grammar messages.
• The BOOMTASTICs which helps children capture 10 ways of adding drama and poetic devices to writing in a vivid visual