Phonics

At Salcombe C of E Primary School, we follow the Read, Write, Inc programme for the teaching of phonics. Children are grouped in EYFS, Year 1 and 2 according to their ability levels. These groups are fluid and flexible according to children’s progress and need. Children’s progress is tracked half termly and lessons are personalised to meet the needs of all learners.

Reading Schemes

At Salcombe C of E Primary School, Reading is a priority and is taught for the first hour of every day. We use the Read, Write, Inc phonics scheme daily and Accelerated Reader is used once the children have completed the phonics programme. Children are motivated by quizzing their books once they are finished and moving up levels. They are rewarded for reading five times a week at home by entering a raffle draw to win a £10 book token.

Once children have completed the phonics programme, they progress onto Read Write Inc Comprehension where children start to unpick more challenging and less repetitive texts. After half a term on RWI comprehension, children move onto Whole Class Reading where they are taught vocabulary, fluency and reading skills through repeatedly reading extracts of high-quality texts. 

Early Writing

During phonics sessions, children complete the RWI Get Writing activities to support their sentence construction. In addition to this, we use elements of story mapping and oral rehearsal from Talk for Writing as well as the Drawing Club approach to support the development and enjoyment of Early Writing. The writing is based around high-quality texts that are often traditional tales and contain repeated language to support with oracy skills. 

Writing beyond KS1

As children progress through the school, we have developed our own writing curriculum based around the core principles of the effective teaching and learning of writing and high quality texts. Children learn to write for a range of real purposes and audiences and learn the age appropriate grammar tools to help them structure their writing appropriately. Model texts are created by teachers, derived from high quality, diverse texts, and live modelling and shared writing supports the children's vocabulary, grammar and idea development. Children use toolkits and boxing up to plan their work accordingly and create their own versions of the teacher's model to create agency, enjoyment and choice with what they write. At the end of a unit, children complete an independent writing task that is then assessed and teachers form targets for children and adapt the curriculum as needed.