English

Writing 

At Thornaby Church of England Primary School we aim to develop children’s love of writing. We recognise the importance of nurturing a culture where children take pride in their writing, can write clearly and accurately and adapt their language and style for a range of contexts. 

We develop writing skills so that our children have the stamina and ability to write at the age expected standard. We provide varied and exciting opportunities for writing for purpose and we encourage pupils to see themselves as authors and poets. We promote the importance of written work by providing a writing purpose and opportunities for children’s writing to be read aloud and listened to by an audience. Handwriting, spelling and grammar sessions are regularly incorporated into English lessons.

Writing Policy_2025 to 2026

Reading

We value reading as a key life skill, and are dedicated to enabling our pupils to become lifelong readers. We believe that phonics provides the foundations of learning to read and acknowledge that children need to be taught the key skills in segmenting and blending to be equipped with the knowledge to be able to complete the phonics check at the end of Year 1. We also value and encourage the children to read for enjoyment and recognise that this starts with the foundations of acquiring letter sounds, segmenting and blending skills. We believe reading is key for academic success but also appreciate and promote a love for reading.

Our aims are:

• For children to become enthusiastic and motivated readers
• To develop children’s confidence in reading a wide variety of genres and text types
• For children to have the skills to decode words in order to be able to read fluently with understanding of what they have read
• To encourage a love of literature and an enjoyment of reading for pleasure
• To use reading to provoke thought within children

We firmly believe reading is the key to all learning so we give all children the opportunity to enter the wonderful worlds that books open up to them. We promote ‘reading for pleasure’ as part of our reading curriculum. Children are encouraged to develop their own love of genres and authors. We provide a wealth of enrichment opportunities including hosting authors, accessing our lending library, attending webinars and working closely with our local library in order to inspire our children and promote a ‘love of reading’.

In addition to daily lessons, children excel in reading through the use of the Reading Plus programme which has been a success for year 3 and 4 more able pupils as an extension / challenge, as well as an integral part of the curriculum for all of our year 5 and 6 pupils. 

Phonics                                             

The teaching of phonics at Thornaby Church of England Primary School follows the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme.

“The Little Wandle programme provides a full progression through all commonly occurring GPCs* (sounds), working from simple to more complex, and taking into account the frequency of their occurrence in the most commonly encountered words.” 

We conduct discrete daily whole class phonic lessons from Early Years through to Key Stage 1 based on the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised approach for teaching phonics.
These lessons focus on repeated practise and lead to high quality phonic sessions being delivered by all staff.

Please access the Little Wandle website (link below) to find more information. The ‘For parents’ section provides videos of how to pronounce sounds and how we teach the reading of words.

For parents | Letters and Sounds