English

At Winwick CE, English covers a range of core skills that are essential for children to be able to master our wider curriculum. Below you will find a range of information linked to how we teach each area of English, as well as our policies and curriculum overview. We also have a page dedicated to our teaching of Phonics.

Little Wandle Reading Letter - February 2025 Little Wandle Wordless Books Letter - February 2025 Little Wandle Home Readers/Sharing Books Information Video Reading Parental Workshop ARCHIVE

Writing is a key skill and at Winwick CofE Primary we believe it is important for children to be given a range of opportunities to develop their writing skills. Because of this, we have a focus on ensuring that cross-curricular writing in other subjects is of the same standard that children produce in their English lessons and we try to provide children with a range of writing opportunities across different areas of the curriculum throughout the year.

As a school, our staff have received a range of CPD linked to writing throughout the year and over previous years to ensure we all have a secure knowledge of the key pedagogy that underpins writing, which has included training from a range of Literacy consultants, including Literacy Counts, EY2P and Talk4Writing.

In addition to this, we have adopted the Literacy Counts 'Read to Write' scheme of learning for our English which has a key focus on how high quality reading material can support the teaching of writing. Each Literacy Counts unit includes reading, writing, spelling and grammar focused around a high quality text. Units include a range of genres of writing and skills are developed as the units move through the school inline with the English National Curriculum. To support our teacher assessment of writing, we also use the Literacy Counts assessment tool which runs alongside the units.

Please see our English Policy for more information.

As a school, in addition to the teaching of Phonics for early reading and spelling through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Scheme, we also follow the Literacy Counts 'Read to Write' scheme of learning, which includes clearly planned spelling and grammar sequences across each unit of work. This scheme ensures coverage of the National Curriculum Spelling requirements.

Weekly spelling homework is given which links to key words, phonics phonemes, common exception words and spelling rules.

Please see our English Policy/Policy for Phonics and Early Reading for more information.

As a school, we have adopted the Twinkl Cursive Handwriting scheme which provides a clear approach to the teaching of handwriting, with cursive being introduced as children move into Year 2; our Reception children learning to print letters before they move onto beginning cursive in Year 1. Please see the Handwriting section in our English Policy for further information.

For more information about Phonics in our school, please CLICK HERE.