“Reading is the gateway for children that makes all other learning possible.”

Barack Obama

Phonics and Spelling

At Pilling St John’s CE Primary School and Nursery, we aim to foster a love of language and reading and, therefore, attach great importance to enabling our children to become fluent readers. In Star class and Year 1 we follow the ‘Letters and Sounds’ phonics programme. This teaches children the sounds and tricky words needed to support them with their reading and writing. From Year 2 this is followed by ‘No Nonsense Spelling’ which teaches children the basic skills needed to read and write words. This programme is aligned with National Curriculum spelling expectations. 

Writing

Pupils receive one English lesson daily, however the skills we develop in these lessons are used and applied across the curriculum and the pupils understand and embrace the philosophy that the expectations for a piece of written work in an English lesson are the same for a piece of written work in R.E. or Science. Pupils are encouraged to be bold in their use of language.  From Year 1 through to Year 6, we follow the Literacy Counts Read to Write scheme.  This scheme provides high-quality teaching of writing through children's high-quality literature which is vocabulary-rich and provides a wealth of fiction and non-fiction writing opportunities.  Vocabulary, grammar and punctuation are taught both explicitly and implicitly within English lessons. This ensures that these skills are effectively embedded into children’s everyday work.  Shared and modelled writing allows the teacher to demonstrate high-quality writing to the children and makes grammatical and punctuation choices explicit.  Children learn to plan, draft, revise, edit and present their work, before evaluating the success of their writing 

Talk for writing, speaking and listening strategies and drama are used successfully across the school to help children to gather ideas. 

From Nursery, our children are taught correct letter formation. As they progress through school, the children are encouraged to write in a neat, legible style using cursive script.  

Reading

Children experience a wide range of authors and text types during their time at Pilling St John’s.  To do this, we approach reading in several different ways. Children have access to a wide range of different reading scheme books when they are first learning to read.  By the end of Year 4, we aim for most children to access our wide selection of free reader books.  We encourage children to read for pleasure by choosing books to take home and enjoy.  Each class has a daily 10 minute 'Tell-a-Tale' where the class teacher reads to the whole class.  Children have a 30 minute reading skills lesson three times a week.  In KS1, this takes the format of children reading in small adult-led guided groups.  In KS2, children participate in whole class reading.  Reading and comprehension skills are taught explicitly through a wealth of extracts covering a breadth of authors, genre and text type. We also have 'Reading Buddies' in school where younger and older children are paired together to share each others' books.

 At Pilling St John's, we aim to instil a passion for reading throughout school.  We do this by marking events such as World Book Day and inviting poets and authors into school.  During Reading Weeks, we visit the local libraries and hold phonics and reading workshops.  We also have a Reading Swap Box Community Library.