English

English at Churcham Primary School:

At Churcham Primary School, we believe that English is at the heart of every child's learning journey. Strong skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening enable children to access the wider curriculum, express their ideas confidently and develop a lifelong love of learning.

Our English curriculum is designed to inspire curiosity, creativity and a passion for language. Through high-quality texts, engaging lessons and meaningful writing opportunities, we help children become confident readers, thoughtful writers and effective communicators.

By the time our pupils leave Churcham Primary School, we aim for them to be confident, articulate and enthusiastic users of language who can read widely, write effectively and communicate their ideas with clarity and purpose. We want every child to develop the skills they need to succeed in school and beyond, whilst fostering a genuine enjoyment of reading and writing that will stay with them for life.

📚 Reading:

At Churcham Primary School, we believe that reading is one of the most important skills a child can learn. Reading unlocks learning across the entire curriculum, develops imagination and creativity, broadens vocabulary and helps children understand the world around them. We are committed to developing fluent, confident readers who enjoy reading for pleasure and for purpose. We aim to foster a lifelong love of books through high-quality teaching, carefully selected texts and regular opportunities for children to read independently, with adults and alongside their peers.

Early Reading and Phonics:

We teach early reading through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised phonics programme. This systematic synthetic phonics programme helps children learn the relationship between letters and sounds and teaches them how to blend sounds together to read words accurately and confidently.

Children take part in daily phonics lessons and regular reading practice sessions, helping them to develop fluency, accuracy and comprehension. Reading books are carefully matched to the sounds and words children have already been taught, enabling children to experience success and develop confidence as readers.

For more information about Little Wandle and guidance on supporting your child at home, please visit:

Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised

Reading at Home:

We strongly value the partnership between home and school in helping children become successful readers.

We encourage parents and carers to read with their child at least five times each week and to record this in their child's Reading Diary. Regular reading at home makes a significant difference and helps children to:

• Build fluency and confidence.

• Improve comprehension and understanding.

• Develop vocabulary and language skills.

• Foster a love of reading.

• Reinforce learning taking place in school.

Just a few minutes of reading each day can have a huge impact on a child's progress and enjoyment of books.

Reading for Pleasure:

At Churcham Primary School, we want every child to develop a genuine love of reading. Every day, teachers share carefully chosen, high-quality texts with their classes through story time and class reading sessions. These books introduce children to a rich variety of authors, genres, themes and cultures, helping to inspire a lifelong passion for reading. Please take a look below to see the high-quality texts that we share with children throughout the year during our end-of-day class reads. These books have been carefully selected to engage, challenge and inspire our pupils.

VIPERS Reading Skills:

To support children's comprehension and understanding of texts, we use the VIPERS approach throughout the school. VIPERS provides a consistent framework for teaching the key reading skills that children need to become confident and successful readers.

VIPERS stands for:

• Vocabulary – Understanding the meaning of words and phrases within a text.

• Inference – Using clues from the text to understand characters' feelings, thoughts and motives, and to work out information that is not directly stated.

• Prediction – Using evidence from the text to make sensible predictions about what might happen next.

• Explanation – Explaining ideas, themes, language choices and the author's purpose.

• Retrieval – Finding and recalling information directly from the text.

• Summarising (or Sequencing in Key Stage 1) – Identifying the main points, events and ideas within a text.

Children develop these skills through whole-class reading lessons, guided reading, discussions and independent activities. VIPERS helps children think deeply about what they read and equips them with the skills needed to understand and analyse a wide range of texts.

When reading at home, parents can also support these skills by asking simple questions such as:

• What does this word mean? (Vocabulary)

• How do you think the character is feeling? (Inference)

• What do you think will happen next? (Prediction)

• Why do you think the author used that word? (Explanation)

• Can you find where it tells us that? (Retrieval)

• Can you tell me the most important things that happened? (Summarising)

Reading Comprehension:

As children progress through the school, they are taught a range of reading skills to help them understand, analyse and enjoy increasingly challenging texts.

They learn how to:

• Retrieve information from a text.

• Explain the meaning of vocabulary.

• Make predictions using evidence.

• Summarise key ideas.

• Infer characters' thoughts, feelings and motives.

• Discuss and evaluate an author's use of language and structure.

These comprehension skills are taught explicitly and are regularly applied across the wider curriculum.

Our Aim:

By the time our pupils leave Churcham Primary School, we aim for them to be fluent, enthusiastic and confident readers who enjoy books, value reading and possess the skills they need to succeed throughout their education and beyond. We want every child to leave our school with a love of reading that will stay with them for life.

✏️Writing:

At Churcham Primary School, we are committed to providing a high-quality writing experience that instils a love of writing and explore rich language with our learners. As a whole school family, we are committed to learning, respecting, and growing together—nurturing each child’s unique strengths and celebrating their individual journey.

Our pupils are given the tools to be able to communicate their thoughts, ideas and emotions effectively.

At Churcham Primary School, we adopt ‘The Write Stuff’ scheme – established by Jane Considine – from Reception to Year 6. This scheme brings clarity to the mechanics of writing through immersion in extraordinary vocabulary and clear and concise systems in which the writer can engage their imagination.

Our ‘sentence stacking’ lessons are delivered by breaking the skills up into learning chunks (3) and then breaking down each chunk into sections: initiate, model and enable. Churcham Primary School defines initiate, model and enable as:

Initiate – A stimulus to capture the children's imagination and set up a sentence.

Model - The teacher models a sentence that outlines clear writing features and techniques based on the current learning chunk.   

Enable – The children write their sentence following the model and have the opportunity to 'deepen the moment'.

Each learning chunk encourages resourcefulness and resilience and children are challenged to ‘deepen the moment’ which requires them to become an independent learner and draw upon previously learnt skills and apply them to their writing during that chunk.

As well as our core English lessons, the children also have access to handwriting lessons where they focus on how to form and then join the letters correctly. These skills are taught discretely but teachers will make links between these skills in the current English work/across the curriculum.

Spellings, punctuation and grammar:

Strong spelling, punctuation and grammar skills are essential building blocks for successful communication. Children are taught these skills progressively throughout their time at school and are given opportunities to apply them in their reading and writing. This helps them to write with increasing accuracy, confidence and sophistication.

For our weekly spelling lessons, we use ‘Big Spellings’. Big Spellings" is a differentiated spelling programme designed to tailor spelling instruction to each child's individual ability rather than their age. It features phonics-based learning and High Frequency Words (HFWs), progressing from simple sounds and CVC words to more complex vocabulary. The curriculum supports whole-school implementation and promotes independent learning through weekly personalised lists, testing, and initial assessment tools. With its structured progression and inclusive approach, "Big Spellings" helps build strong foundational literacy skills across varied learning levels.

Useful websites:

Phonics:

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/ -This website will give you some key information on how we teach phonics using the Little Wandle programme.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/phonics/balloon-phonics-cvc-game -This will help your child to start to identify the initial/middle/end sounds they can hear in words.

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/resources -These games will help prepare your child for the Year 1 Phonics Screening Assessment.

Reading:

https://www.booktrust.org.uk/books-and-reading/-Take a look on here for tips/advice on encouraging reading at home and there are also some great book recommendations.

https://childrens.poetryarchive.org/explore/?theme=131 -A great website to help engage your child with the world of poetry!

https://shop.scholastic.co.uk/reading-spine -This website has a wonderful list of recommended books for your child to read.

https://www.sats-papers.co.uk/ks2-sats-papers/ -Year 6 parents: you can access practice SATS papers online here.

Writing:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zv48q6f - Fun videos and information given to help children understand subject terminology. The website will also help your child to understand how to construct sentences with correct use of punctuation.

https://ictgames.com/mobilePage/spookySpellings/index.html -This website will help your child to learn to spell the common exception words.

https://www.funenglishgames.com/writinggames/instructions.html -Your child can have a go at completing some writing tasks on this website. It will also help your child to know the difference between the different writing genres.

Please contact the headteacher if you have any questions about how we teach English at Churcham Primary School.