At Smithdown Primary, we aim to have all children reading widely, fluently and confidently. Having previously been a ‘Power of Reading School’, we have adapted our reading and writing approaches to incorporate Talk for Writing principles, creating an inspiring reading and writing curriculum. We also utilise elements of the Literacy Counts resources. We believe that the teachers at Smithdown have the subject knowledge, drive and creativity to build bespoke English lessons that meet the needs of our children.
Our bespoke curriculum incorporates reading, writing, vocabulary and GPS skills through the teaching of high quality texts each half term.
It is our aim to encourage children to learn to love reading and to read regularly outside of school. We have recently opened our own lending library for families and pupils to enjoy.
Children will be taught two key reading skills:
Word reading – the ability to decode words- will be taught through the use of the synthetic phonics scheme ‘ReadWriteInc.’ Children will be bench marked to assess which level of books they should be reading and to ensure that they progress appropriately. Children in KS2 also have access to the supportive scheme ‘Fresh Start’ in order to help them to become confident readers.
Comprehension – Children’s comprehension skills will be taught through high quality discussions with teachers and teaching assistants, individual and group reading times and whole class reading activities. We have moved towards a whole class reading approach and we have found that children have become motivated to read and discuss more challenging texts.
Celebrations such as World Book Day are used to invite authors into school and promote the pleasure and knowledge that can be gained from books.
The documents below give you more information about the texts and genres that your child will be covering. Please note that this document should be read in conjunction with our curriculum overviews as the order of the units may change throughout the year. In addition to this, we are constantly reshaping or bespoke offer.
Reception Overview for reading and writing Year 1 Overview for reading and writing
Year 2 Overview for reading and writing Year 3 Overview for reading and writing
Year 4 Overview for reading and writing Year 5 Overview for reading and writing
Year 6 Overview for reading and writing
Primary National Curriculum for English
Support your child with reading
What is Read Write Inc?
Read Write Inc (RWI) is a phonics complete literacy programme which helps all children learn to read fluently and at speed so they can focus on developing their skills in comprehension, vocabulary and spelling. The programme is designed for children aged 4-7. However, at Highfield we begin the programme in Nursery and will continue teaching RWI to children beyond the age of 7 if they still need support in their reading.
RWI was developed by Ruth Miskin and more information on this can be found at https://ruthmiskin.com/en/find-out-more/parents/.
How will RWI be taught?
All children are assessed every 6-8 weeks and placed in groups to target their phonic at the appropriate level. This allows complete participation in lessons.
To help at home:
Your child will start to bring books home when they are confident readers. Please help them to read and give lots of praise!
If you have any other questions about RWI, please see your class teacher.
Phonics Screening Check Year One
What is the Year 1 phonics screening check?
The Year 1 phonics screening check is a short, light-touch assessment to confirm whether individual pupils have learnt phonic decoding to an appropriate standard.
It will identify the children who need extra help so they are given support by their school to improve their reading skills. They will then be able to retake the check so that schools can track pupils until they are able to decode.
Useful websites for Parents
Please find a list of websites that you may find useful in helping you and your child learn about phonics. Games and fun activity websites are also included.
http://jollylearning.co.uk/ – Games and information for parents
http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/ – many games to play
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks1/literacy/phonics/play/ – fun games for the children to play
http://www.ictgames.com/literacy.html – fun games for the children to play
http://www.kenttrustweb.org.uk/kentict/kentict_home.cfm – fun games for the children to play and information for parents
http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/ – fun games for the children to play
http://www.starfall.com/ – fun games for the children to play
http://www.firstschoolyears.com/ – fun games for the children to play
BBC Bitesize – many games to play covering all areas of the curriculum
This link gives you an overview of how RWI phonics is organised.
Please click on this link for the Ruth Miskin website where you can find more information regarding Read Write Inc phonics and Literacy & Language including useful videos and guides for parents.
The Reception children of RAG have enjoyed listening to the marvellous Christmas story, ‘The Polar Express’. They even managed to retell the story in sequence, from start to finish, using pictures. Well done!
We really enjoyed writing these dual narratives in Year 6, we used two characters from the book we read together in lessons. We hope you enjoy reading them.
For our PSHE lesson we are celebrating differences. In previous weeks we have spoken about racism, bullying and rumours and now we are researching a range of countries and what their culture looks like.
We have just started work on writing our own dual narratives, based on the characters and events in Neil Gaiman’s Hansel and Gretel. Such powerful openings! We can’t wait to get writing more, they will be incredible to read.
Yesterday we had a great time at the International Slavery Museum. We had a workshop in the ‘legacies of the transatlantic slave trade’ and then had time to explore the museum with our task sheets. 
We really enjoyed listening to the story of The Lonely Beast. We acted out different parts of the story and retold the story to each other
We came back into our classroom and found that someone or something had been in there! We looked at the disaster that had been left behind and asked questions about what we thought had happened!
We found
– a globe
– a map
– broken biscuits
– teapot and cups
– footprints
and…. a lot of mess!!
We are enjoying sharing the story of The Gruffalo this week! We have painted The Gruffalo and are describing The Gruffalo as part of our literacy and writing about what we can see. We also shared The Gruffalo song 🎵 and below is a link to share this at home.
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We are working hard on learning our set 1 sounds and blending sounds together to make words.
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We found some items in our box to help us with predicting what our new class text is about.
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Author of ‘The late crew’ Rob Ferguson came to visit our school today. Some of us were so excited to even get our books signed by a real life author! We even designed our own alien that we could use in our stories. 
In Geography, we have been finding out about renewable energy sources: why they are needed alongwith the advantages and disadvantages of each.
Today we have looked at different poems for national poetry day!
We simply had to share a few more pieces of work as we think they are truly fantastic! Detailed information which is extremely well presented. Great work Year 6!
After researching mountain gorillas and adaptions of animals, we have just begun to write our own explanation texts. Keep an eye out for the finished pieces.
Anna and Crocodile asked us for our help today. We thought about how to make a sandwich, created some plans, made some sandwiches and of course had to taste test them! Yum yum!
Fabulous turn out at our phonics meeting. Keep an eye on the app for each weeks videos and activities.
We went on a noun hunt and then acted out verbs to help us to identify the difference between the two.
Today we made our own maps in preparation for our instruction texts. We had to think carefully about where the gold was hidden and then give our partner instructions to find it.
We are enjoying our new phonics groups and have worked so hard on our fluency this week.
We retold the story in teams and performed the story to our friends.
We have learnt all the Makaton signs for the animals in our story and then used them to retell the story.
This week we have been looking at the story ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’. Outside we built a bridge to cross to the green grass. We made signs for the goats from the troll showing they can’t cross the bridge.
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To celebrate the end of learning of Goldilocks and The Three Bears we hosted our own Teddy Bears Picnic. We had party food and danced with our teddies. We had a wonderful afternoon!
This week we have been working hard with our friends to put our Supertato story pictures into the correct order.
We have thoroughly enjoyed reading Neil Gaiman’s version of Hansel and Gretel, so much so, it led us to writing our own dual narratives. We are so proud of the writing we have produced.
We have printed trains with blocks and made marks to represent train track, trains and signals.
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For Remembrance Day, we read the poem ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and after discussing the content, we embellished the poem with images of poppies.
We retold the model text. We used picture clues to help. We are ready to write our own circular story now #smithdownwriters #smithdownreaders
We worked in teams to make a better map than Anna and Crocodile #smithdownreaders #smithdownwriters
On Friday we put Anna and Crocodile in the hot seat #smithdownreaders @clpe1
This morning we found some treasure chests in our room. We found some clues about our new story. #smithdownreaders @misshath2 @SmithdownPr
We really dressing up and getting in role as Little Red and the Wolf #smithdownreaders
Thank you to all of our families who came to our first Reception parents Literacy workshop. We hope to see you all again next week for our second session! #smithdowneyfs #smithdownreaders
