English – Reading

Intent

At Luttons Community Primary Academy, we believe that literacy is the heartbeat of our curriculum. As a small, rural school, we aim to inspire a community of confident, passionate readers and writers who see the world through the stories they read and the voices they find.

English is not taught in isolation; it is the thread that connects every subject, providing our children with the essential skills to explore, question, and succeed. We are committed to developing pupils who can speak with eloquence, listen with empathy, and write with purpose, ensuring they are fully prepared for their future beyond our village gates.

Implementation

Reading is our highest priority. We leverage our unique school setting to foster a culture of reading that extends from the classroom to the home.

• A Culture of Reading: We celebrate literacy through inviting reading areas in every classroom and daily protected storytimes. By promoting reading for pleasure, we ensure every child develops a lifelong love for books.

• Early Reading & Phonics: In EYFS and KS1, we follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds programme. Children participate in small-group guided reading three times a week, focusing on decoding, prosody, and comprehension using books precisely matched to their phonic knowledge.

• Home-School Partnership: Once a book is mastered in school, it is sent home to be celebrated with parents. We also provide “reading for pleasure books” from our library to encourage families to enjoy stories together.

• The Power of Talk: We place heavy emphasis on discussion and oracy. By encouraging children to debate and infer, we ensure their voices are heard and their confidence grows.

Impact

The result of our focused approach is a school full of children who can decode with ease and read with fluency and expression. By weaving reading and writing into every subject, our pupils see the relevance of literacy in all aspects of life.

• Progress for All: Our children make strong progress, with tailored interventions quickly supporting anyone who falls behind.

• Robust Assessment: Progress is tracked through daily observations during guided reading and formal PIXL assessments each term.

• Community Connection: Our parents are active partners in the journey. Through regular communication and weekly celebrations of success, we ensure that the “Luttons Learner” is supported both at school and at home.

Phonics

Substantive knowledge:

In Phonics and Early Reading, substantive knowledge is the ability to decode and sight read words. This allows children opportunities to read for pleasure, including reading and reciting poetry, and develop their vocabulary. Children are then able to apply their knowledge of reading strategies to comprehend a range of texts. Our goal is for children to learn to read so that they can read to learn and read for pleasure.

Disciplinary knowledge:

In Phonics and Early Reading, the disciplinary knowledge is delivered through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme.

Children in Nursery begin their journey into reading with our Foundations to Phonics programme. During these sessions children develop their focused listening and attention and oral blending skills. Children play games with sounds and this ensures that they are ‘tuned into’ sounds when they begin Phase 2.

In Reception through repeated practice of the Grapheme Phoneme Correspondences  (GPC), children then learn to orally blend and finally decode and blend written words.

In Year One children are exposed to a wider range of alternative phonemes and use these to make their spelling more accurate.

Across the Little Wandle programme children learn to use the phonemes to read words, sentences and make spelling choices. Children build their reading fluency through repeated practice of decodable words and building reading stamina.