English

Intent

Reading is at the heart of our curriculum and in our last Ofsted inspection (2022) it was identified as being ‘within the fabric of the school’. We encourage children to develop a positive attitude towards all kind of literature and believe that parents play a vital role in this process. We are a school that is passionate about books and reading. Last year alone, we read 52,000,000 words, which is fantastic, and our love of books just keeps growing. In fact, we aim for all our children to be life-long bookworms who access books to find out information, relax and learn about the world around them. Indeed, every child deserves the chance to become a reader; research shows that children that enjoy reading achieve well across the curriculum. We believe that reading is a passport to the world and the benefits of reading open children up to a wealth of ideas, experiences, places and times they might never otherwise experience in real life – stories, poems and non-fiction books all enable children to gain a greater understanding of the world around them.

We want the children in our school to:

• Enjoy reading all genre of books and appreciate the value and worth of reading in everyday life.
• Read a range of different kinds of reading material fluently and with understanding
• Make choices about the sorts of texts that they enjoy
• Use reading skills to search for information
• Use a full range of reading cues (e.g. phonics, grammar and context)
• Read ‘between the lines’ and behind the images
• Be exposed to literature that is beyond their current experience and fluency.
• Utilise the range of ‘good readers’ skills that are taught across school to be become an effective comprehender of a text.
• For children to be immersed in a world of storytelling from the minute they start school
• To thrive when learning to read in our phonics scheme Little Wandle.

• To read with expression, prosody and confidence

Implementation:

Throughout the school day, children are provided with many opportunities to develop, strengthen and celebrate their reading skills. These include:

• Daily phonics sessions using Little Wandle in Early Years Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1
• Daily supported reading sessions in Year 1
• A focused reading programme in KS2 which allows for discussion, analysis and written responses to text using a shared vocabulary across school
• Focus texts used in literacy lessons
• Home reading books and a reading diary to record in
• A class novel or story book.
• Opportunities to role play and act out fictional scenes
• 7-day readers are celebrated in celebration assembly as are reading millionaires
• Regular class visits to the library
• We have a large, contemporary and diverse library
• Guided reading sessions allow time for focused group comprehension work in addition to whole class shared reading experiences.
• Childre are guided to be expert readers using the rage of good reader skills that are used across the school.
• Book show and tell sessions enable children to talk about and recommend book choices that they have made to others.

Where it has been identified that children need additional support to meet age-related expectations, the school offer a range of intervention support strategies including:

• ‘Inference Training’- designed to support those who decode well but need support to comprehend texts
• Switch On- designed to support those who find decoding words difficult.
• Additional 1:1 reading with an adult or volunteer
• Little Wandle catch-up sessions for phonics support.

We use Accelerated Reader at Hartwell for some children in KS2 (and some in Year 2 also) as a vehicle to assess and encourage readers. After finishing a book, the children take part in a short quiz, which gives them a word count that the children feverishly add to their total, which is readily celebrated in class.

In KS1, children read from a range of texts that complement the phonics that they are working on during morning phonics sessions and enable them to develop confidence and accuracy with their use. If children find reading challenging, we have a range of interventions that are designed to boost both their phonics knowledge and reading comprehension.

Our Library:

Our library is the hub of the school and is always full of children of all ages searching for books or treasuring books whilst snuggled on beanbags. Our library is stocked full of books that reflect a range of cultures and genres that reflect our exciting and vibrant world.

We have a valuable group of KS2 Library Guardians who dedicatedly applied for the post and were selected based on their passion for books. Our Library Guardians work hard to :

• Canvass book requests from children
• Run books fairs and decide how the revenue will be spent
• Keep the library running smoothly by tidying and categorising books
• Share their own book recommendations
• Run a twice weekly reading club at lunchtimes

Reading Progression

The document that we use to ensure progression at Hartwell is:

Reading progression

Reading policy

Reading at Home

Reading at home is vitally important so please take a moment to read our booklet on home reading:

Parent leaflet

Writing Intent

At Hartwell, our children leave Year 6 with the range of skills that they need to be able to write confidently and skilfully for a wide variety of reasons. They will be enthusiastic and confident writers who enjoy communicating their ideas in a range of written forms. Children  at Hartwell become knowledgeable about the different reasons in which writers are moved to write: to instruct, persuade or discuss, to report, paint with words in narrative and poetry, reflect to make a record and to explain. We believe that, by teaching children to become life-long independent motivated writers, we are providing them with the most powerful cultural capital you can have – an ability to turn your voice (your thoughts, knowledge, opinions, artistry) into powerful writing.

To be skilful writers, every year our children will progressively acquire:

• A richer vocabulary.
• An understanding of grammar conventions
• A growing knowledge of spelling patterns and how words are constructed. They also become knowledgeable about different techniques for learning spellings.

• An ability to write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences and using the key features that help to identify these genres.
• Both automaticity and legibility in handwriting and its recognise its importance in relation to future readers accessing their texts..

• Effective writing skills across the curriculum subject range; opportunities are given across all curriculum subjects to apply their skills and knowledge of writing. This means that it becomes embedded within them as an important life-skill that they acquire before they progress on their learning journey to secondary school
• Punctuation and other conventions to aid their audience’s ability to read their writing easily and as they intended.
• Develop Oracy to work with peers as writing (in particular the run up to writing) in class is a collaborative process.
• Children become more skilful in the run up to writing including how they plan, draft, revise, edit, publish and perform their writing intentions.

Implementation:

Developing language:

• Language is celebrated at Hartwell as we are a Voice21 school where sentence stems and tier three vocabulary are modelled and used effectively enabling children to demonstrate.
• The importance writers place on word choice and on increasing their vocabulary. This includes seeking synonyms for words when it feels appropriate which are stored in their language books for future use. This is celebrated across the school in assemblies and class language books in KS1. WOTW also introduce children to new words that are scaffolded into everyday use.

• How writers proofread their writing effectively and so correct unsure spellings before a piece of writing reaches its result. Draft books or whiteboards aid this drafting process

The run up to writing:

• The children participate in a range of activities that enable them to write authentically and with enthusiasm.:
  • Using drama to bring texts alive and to provide opportunities to generate and store language collaboratively.
  • Analysing expert texts to ‘harvest’ language and develop an authentic voice.
  • Spending time in our local areas experiencing first hand inspiration for later writing.
  • Watching carefully chosen short clips that provide an opportunity to widen their background knowledge.

Quality First Teaching:

• Staff receive regular training in the most innovative ways to deliver our curriculum
• Our curriculum is designed so that children experience a wide range of genres across each Key stage which they will later be able to return to and further hone their skills.
• Across a unit, lessons progress so that children can develop their writing skills progressively as we move onto an extended write.
• Our teaching of writing supports children’s learning of the writing curriculum because we have carefully considered the research which informed the construction of the writing curriculum (DfE 2012) (including the simple model of writing). For example, we teach children about:

• How to be part of a community of writers.
• The different reasons writers are moved to write.
• The writing processes.
• Setting clear writing targets.
• Having inquiry skills.
• The importance of writing momentum and practising the craft of writing every day.
• How grammar functions within the craft of writing.
• How transcription skills if not focused on can be a barrier to effective writing.
• Marking comments that are focussed, link to a lessons SC and in turn their targets in their books.
• Our use of clear and effective modelling where the teacher models being a writer alongside the analysis of model texts to appraise against genre features. Children become skilled in understanding why a feature is used to impact the reader.
• The curriculum is designed in the long term to cover a broad range of genres across a year and then time to revisit these genres later in the Key Stage- all using same vocabulary.
• Daily plans utilise succinct SC that reflect the features of a genre or effective writing.
• Teachers model the writing process regularly using My turn your turn approach.

Handwriting is taught as an embedded skill as well as separately to the writing lesson.

• Handwriting policy

The teaching of SPAG (Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar) is taught both in stand-alone sessions but it is also woven throughout our day-to-day teaching so that children are able to build up their knowledge of their appropriate uses in their day-to-day writing.

• SPAG policy

Intent

Our aim at Hartwell Primary School is to deliver a rigorous and systematic phonics curriculum through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, ensuring that all pupils develop secure early reading skills, build automatic decoding, and foster confidence and enjoyment in reading from the earliest stages. In September 2024, we switched our previous phonics scheme to Little Wandle in order to elevate our already high standards further. This change was made to solidify our early reading provision in order to support all pupils make strong foundations when learning to read.

Implementation

We implement Little Wandle with carefully sequenced phonics lessons, fidelity to the programme structure, regular assessment, and targeted keep-up interventions. Phonics is prioritised throughout EYFS and KS1 to enable our children to build decoding, prosody and comprehension skills when reading. Sessions are delivered through high-quality, whole-class teaching that build upon previous learning and introduce new grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) in a clear and engaging way. During guided reading sessions, children read fully decodable books matched to their phonics stage. Those who need additional phonics support receive this through regular ‘keep-up’ sessions with a trained member of staff.

Phonics in Reception

In Reception, children begin by learning single letter sounds and progress to digraphs (two letters, one sound) and trigraphs (three letters, one sound). They are taught how to blend sounds into words and segment words into sounds, laying the foundation for fluent reading and accurate spelling. To support parents, we offer a ‘Let’s Read’ workshop for Reception parents where we share the principles of teaching phonics and the importance of pure sounds, and give advice on how to read with children at home. Examples of pure sound pronunciation can also be found in the ‘For Parents’ section of the Little Wandle website.

Phonics in Year 1

In Year 1, children continue to build on their phonics knowledge and prepare for the statutory Phonics Screening Check in the summer term. The programme ensures that all children have a solid grasp of the 44 phonemes and the graphemes that represent these phonemes. We aim for all children to leave Year 1 with a secure understanding of how to decode words, read with prosody and comprehend what they are reading.

Impact

The impact of our Little Wandle phonics provision is that children make strong progress in decoding, segmenting, and blending, resulting in increasing reading fluency and accuracy. The switch from our previous phonics lessons to Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised has been a huge success, leading to a 100% pass rate of the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check in June 2025. Since the change, pupils have become more confident, motivated readers, prepared for the next stage of literacy.

Useful links

Progression in phonics

For parents | Letters and Sounds

Phonics & Early Reading policy

Voice 21

Our vision:……

Oracy is the ability to articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage with others through spoken language. At Hartwell we are committed to transforming oracy teaching and learning across the school, enabling all our children to benefit from a high-quality oracy education.

In the classroom context, oracy is both learning to and through talk. It is through talk that students can develop and share their understanding, through interactions with both teachers and peers. However, to do this effectively, students must also be taught to talk effectively, ensuring they have the necessary skills and understanding to engage in talk for learning. 

Goals …

• Improving student confidence
• Increasing academic attainment
• Promoting student well-being
• Fostering belief in students that their voice is valued
• Raising aspirations of students

In September 2025 we became a Voice 21 school and began working with the UK's Oracy Education Charity Voice 21. Through the deliberate, explicit and systematic teaching of oracy across phases and throughout the curriculum we will support our children to make progress in the four strands of oracy outlined in the oracy framework.

The oracy framework provides an overview of the oracy skills and knowledge children should acquire during their time at Hartwell. It can help to identify strengths and areas for development, plan explicitly for talk and support reflection on talk.

In our first year working with Voice 21, we will be working on developing our classroom practice through developing oracy charters and introducing the oracy framework and talk tactics. In the coming years we will continue to develop our curriculum further to ensure it is "oracy rich".

Click here to see the EYFS oracy framework

Click here to see the KS1 framework

Click here to see the KS2 framework

2025-2026 Strategy:

• To develop the use of sentence stems to aid discussion across the subject range
• To develop discussion guidelines and strategies to ensure consistency across classes
• To be familiar with and to utilise talk tactic benchmarks
• To be familiar with and to utilise talk tactic benchmarks
• To utilise tier 3 vocabulary across abilities in all subject areas
• To use a shared vocabulary across classrooms