English at Strathmore
At Strathmore, we believe that a quality English curriculum should develop children’s love of reading, writing and discussion. We have a rigorous and well organised English curriculum that is based on a clear system of progression and provides many purposeful opportunities for children to develop their skills and knowledge. Our curriculum closely follows the aims of the National Curriculum for English 2014.
To support our children with learning to read and write, we use Little Wandle as a scheme for phonics and ESSENTIALwriting as our English scheme. Both of these schemes have been chosen as they align to the aims of our curriculum and are best suited to support our pupils in developing the skills needed to be successful and a love of reading and writing. For more information on our English curriculum , please view our English Curriculum overview below:
Reading, Writing and Handwriting
Phonics at Strathmore
At Strathmore, we teach phonics through a scheme called Little Wandle. We believe that for all children to become fluent readers and writers, phonics must be taught through a systematic and structured phonics programme.
Phonics is taught daily for children working at Phases 1-5. Each session will follow the same format of introduce, revisit and review, teach, practise and apply. This ensures that children learn new sounds whilst applying taught sounds to their reading of new words. Children work on decoding, segmenting and blending in every lesson. Children are exposed to and use the correct subject specific technical vocabulary (such as phoneme, digraph, trigraph). These children have an additional 3 reading practise sessions per week, to help build fluency in decoding.
Progression in Phonics
- In Nursery, children follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised 'Foundations for Phonics Programme'. This programme introduces children to oral blending and language development through high quality nursery rhymes and stories.
- In Reception, children are introduced to the phase 2 and 3 graphemes and taught to blend and segment sounds to read and write. This includes their work in the Summer term on reading and writing
- In Year 1, children are introduced to the phase 5 graphemes. Within Phase 5 children learn:
- new graphemes for the sounds they already know
- that the same grapheme can have alternative pronunciations.
- In Year 2 children revise their phase 5 phonics learning and then complete the 'bridge to spelling' programme. This 'bridge' teaches children how to 'think about spelling', with the children completing the alphabetic code and learning the underpinning concepts of spelling. Once this learning is secure, they then move onto the Year 2 spelling units.
Reading Practice Sessions
Children are given the opportunity to apply their phonics learning in reading practice sessions, which happen three times a week. Within these three sessions, the children are given the opportunity to read and enjoy a Little Wandle reading book that is pitched at their reading level. Alongside reading the book in each session, the children also focus on:
- decoding - using their phonics knowledge to identify and blend the phonics sounds to read.
- prosody - practising reading with fluency and intonation
- comprehension
Reading at Home
Each week, two reading books are sent home with the children.
Book 1 - A Litte Wandle book - this book is to support children with learning the skill of reading. It will have been read in school three times and the children should be able to read it with automaticity and limited overt blending. Once the children can read with speed and fluency, they graduate the Little Wandle programme and read longer Little Wandle fluency books in school. They will then be sent home with an age appropriate recommended reading book, to practice the skill of reading at home.
Book 2 - A Strathmore library book - this book is to support children with developing the will of reading. The children will go to the school library with their class and select this book to share at home with their families in order to develop the real joy of reading. This book is to be shared within the family and read to the children.
Parent Support
Little Wandle has a 'For Parents' section on their website which is full of information to help you support your child with saying their phonemes (sounds) and writing their graphemes (letters). This page has a wealth of resources to support you at home, including videos that share how we teach Little Wandle, progression documents and nursery rhymes for children accessing our Foundation to phonics sessions.
We hold annual Phonics Workshops to encourage all parents and carers to support their children with phonics at home. Please click below to watch recordings of the workshops and view all of the associated handouts, if you have any questions, please ask to speak to your child's class teacher.
Nursery Phonics - Useful Information
Reception Phonics - Useful Information and Workshop Recordings
Reception Phonics - Useful Information and Workshop Recordings
Year 2 Phonics - Useful Information
Our Writing Curriculum is taught through the scheme Essentials for Writing by Herts for Learning.