Weston Village Primary SchoolEnglish: Reading and Writing
English at Weston
At Weston Village Primary School, English gives children the tools to understand, communicate and participate in the world around them.
We want every child to become a fluent and enthusiastic reader, a confident speaker and a writer who can communicate ideas clearly, accurately and effectively.
Strong foundations matter. Children need secure decoding, fluency, vocabulary, sentence understanding, handwriting and spelling so that these do not become barriers to increasingly ambitious reading and writing.
Our English curriculum therefore develops these elements systematically while giving children access to rich texts, purposeful discussion and meaningful opportunities to read and write.
Reading
Learning to Read
Early reading is taught through Read Write Inc. Phonics, a systematic synthetic phonics programme.
Children learn the relationship between sounds and letters, blend sounds to read words and apply their developing phonic knowledge to books that are carefully matched to what they know.
Children are assessed regularly so that teaching is closely matched to their current stage of learning. Within RWI, pupils work in progress groups which are reviewed through regular assessment.
Children who need additional practice receive further support so that gaps are identified and addressed quickly.
Our Phonics and Early Reading page explains this approach in more detail.
Becoming a Fluent, Thoughtful Reader
Once children have secure foundations in phonics, reading teaching increasingly develops fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.
From Year 2 onwards, children encounter carefully selected fiction, non-fiction and poetry through a structured reading curriculum. Texts are grouped around a wide range of themes and subject matter, allowing pupils to encounter increasingly ambitious vocabulary, ideas and forms of writing.
As children progress through school, they learn to:
retrieve and explain information
make and justify inferences
understand vocabulary in context
summarise and identify important ideas
consider how authors use language and structure
make connections within and between texts
discuss, explain and justify their interpretations.
The curriculum deliberately exposes pupils to diverse content. For example, the current reading sequence ranges from emergency services, castles and habitats in Year 2 to Shakespeare, medicine and persuasive texts in Year 5, and evolution, civil rights and the Industrial Revolution in Year 6.
Reading for Pleasure
Learning how to read is only part of our ambition. We want children to choose to read.
Children hear high-quality books read aloud, have opportunities for independent reading and encounter texts across the wider curriculum.
Teachers help pupils broaden their reading choices so that, over time, children experience different authors, genres, cultures, perspectives and forms of writing.
Writing
Our aim is for children to become writers who can construct, develop and communicate ideas with increasing control and independence.
Writing places many demands on a child at once. Successful writers need ideas and vocabulary, but they also need secure sentence knowledge, handwriting, spelling, punctuation and an understanding of how different texts work.
Our curriculum therefore develops these elements deliberately rather than expecting them simply to emerge through extended writing.
Building Strong Sentence Foundations
A significant part of our approach is Place Value of Punctuation and Grammar (PVPG).
PVPG develops children's understanding of how sentences work. It is not simply an approach to teaching isolated grammar terminology. Children learn to identify and construct sentences accurately, understand the roles that words and groups of words perform, and apply that knowledge when writing.
This learning becomes increasingly sophisticated as children move through school. Older pupils may use more ambitious vocabulary and structures but can still need explicit teaching to maintain control over increasingly complex sentences.
From Year 2 to Year 6, the writing curriculum begins with a core PVPG sequence. The content develops substantially with age: Year 3 develops knowledge of subjects, verb phrases and sentence construction, while Years 5 and 6 move into areas including complex subjects, gerunds, phrasal verbs and reasoning about more demanding sentence structures.
In Year 1, children move into this learning when their transcription and sentence foundations are sufficiently secure.
Writing Through High-Quality Texts
Children then apply and extend their knowledge through units built around carefully selected books.
These provide rich contexts for narrative and non-fiction writing while specific knowledge of grammar, punctuation, vocabulary and text organisation is explicitly taught and revisited.
As pupils move through school, the demands increase. Children progress from constructing and punctuating accurate sentences to controlling paragraphs, cohesion, dialogue, viewpoint, formality and increasingly sophisticated punctuation and sentence structures.
For example, the current curriculum develops from Year 3 work on paragraphing, direct speech and time, place and cause to Year 5 work on relative clauses, formal register, cohesion, parenthesis, colons and semi-colons.
By Year 6, teaching is increasingly responsive to what pupils already know, with later curriculum choices used diagnostically to address gaps and secure independent application.
Spelling
Spelling is explicitly taught at Weston because accurate, increasingly automatic spelling allows children to concentrate on the ideas they want to communicate.
Our Weston Spelling Pathway combines explicit teaching with frequent retrieval and application.
From Year 2 onwards, the normal weekly pattern includes:
Monday – Revise and Introduce
Children revisit previous learning and explore the week's spelling pattern, rule or word feature.
Tuesday – Retrieval
A short activity strengthens recall.
Wednesday – Practise and Dictate
Children practise the pattern in context and apply it through dictation.
Thursday – Retrieval
A further brief opportunity to recall and revisit learning.
Friday – Apply and Consolidate
Children use focus words independently in their own sentences and complete a short cumulative check.
This means spelling is not simply a list of words to memorise for a weekly test. Children learn about sounds and spelling patterns, word structure and morphology, vocabulary and meaning, and are expected to apply spelling accurately within writing.
Our Spelling at Weston page explains the approach and how families can support practice at home.
Handwriting and Transcription
Writing also depends on being able to record ideas fluently.
From Reception onwards, children are explicitly taught letter formation and handwriting alongside the spelling and transcription skills they need to record their ideas.
In the earliest stages, oral composition, handwriting, phonics and shared or modelled writing work together. Children move gradually from meaningful mark-making and recording words and phrases towards independent sentence writing as they become ready.
As pupils progress through school, increasing fluency in handwriting and spelling frees attention for composition, vocabulary and the increasingly complex demands of writing.
Speaking, Listening and Vocabulary
Spoken language underpins both reading and writing.
Children regularly rehearse ideas aloud, explain their thinking, discuss texts, listen to others and use increasingly precise vocabulary.
Teachers explicitly teach important words and give pupils repeated opportunities to hear, say, read and use them.
Our whole-school Words & Visuals routine supports this by ensuring important vocabulary is deliberately taught and made accessible within English and across the wider curriculum.
Inclusive English Teaching
Our aim is for every child to participate successfully in ambitious English learning.
The same universal routines used throughout Weston support English teaching:
I → We → You provides clear modelling, guided practice and an opportunity for independent application.
Scaffold → Fade provides support where it is needed and reduces it as children become increasingly secure.
Retrieval, little and often helps important knowledge move into long-term memory.
Words & Visuals supports vocabulary and understanding.
Additional support may include further phonics teaching, additional reading practice, oral rehearsal, vocabulary support, sentence scaffolds, adapted texts or focused intervention.
The aim is always to provide sufficient support for success while continuing to build independence.
Assessment in English
Assessment is part of everyday English teaching.
In phonics, regular assessment ensures children receive teaching closely matched to the sounds and skills they need next.
In reading, teachers use pupils' reading, discussion, written responses and more formal assessments where appropriate to identify fluency and comprehension strengths and gaps.
In writing, teachers consider children's independent application of the knowledge they have been taught. Assessment is used diagnostically: where sentence construction, spelling, transcription, grammar or composition presents a barrier, subsequent teaching responds to that need.
This information contributes to pupil progress discussions and helps teachers identify where pupils need further teaching, practice, support or greater challenge.
English in Reception
English foundations begin from the moment children join Weston.
In Reception, children develop communication and language, phonological awareness, early reading and phonics, handwriting and transcription, oral composition and meaningful early writing.
Shared stories, conversation, play and purposeful opportunities to read and write help establish the foundations on which the Key Stage 1 curriculum builds.
Our English Curriculum
The documents below show the planned progression and texts for the current academic year: