English Implementation

implementation

We teach our children the skills to help them:

Listen attentively:

Paying attention to detail to process the information and respond.

Modelling reading out loud
Encouraging the sharing of work

Talk confidently:

Explore, develop and sustain ideas through talk. Speak confidently with intonation, clear diction, accurate grammar and style with regard to their audience.

Effective questioning
Discussion using ‘book talk.’
Partner talk

Read fluently:

Using appropriate expression and intonation, with good comprehension, from a wide variety of texts, at their own level, for pleasure.

Daily phonics (Read, Write, Inc) in Early Years and KS1
CLPE Power of Reading strategies in KS2
Appropriate-level home reading books
Buddy reading, engaging book corners and visits to the school library

Understand and interpret texts:

Retrieving, deducing, identifying and explaining the writers' use of syntax, context, vocabulary and literary features.

Daily comprehension carousel in KS1
Daily guided reading in KS2
Quality texts
Texts linked to topics and areas of interest

Write for a range of purposes:

Develop their skills, imagination and personal expression through a range of writing tasks using clear, concise language with accurate punctuation and grammar in a style appropriate for the purposes.

Opportunities for independent, free writing
One ‘Big Write’ every term

Spell competently:

Become a competent speller using a range of strategies.

Read, Write Inc in Early Years and KS1
National Curriculum and topic-based spelling in KS2
Weekly spelling lists for homework, tested weekly

Write legibly:

Using neat, legible joined handwriting in the cursive style.

Take pride in their presentation.
Use PenPals handwriting in Years 2-4
Individual handwriting interventions in Years 5-6

Evaluate critically:

Make fair critical responses about their own language work, that of their peers and a variety of published authors.

Reading high-quality, thought-provoking and inspiring texts.

We provide exceptional opportunities through visits, partnerships and exemplary teaching supported by CPD.

We invite authors, poets and storytellers to visit Handsworth to encourage reading for pleasure and develop writing skills.
We have developed a partnership with the local secondary school to offer Guided Reading and Paired Writing projects.
Teachers have attended the National Theatre’s Let's Play CPD to develop creativity and theatre-making in primary schools.

We promote a growth mindset through the support we offer and the questions we ask.

Our teachers use various teaching and learning methods to cater to different learning styles.
In daily lessons, children participate in a range of activities which enable them to practise their English skills. This includes whole-class teaching and reading, small group focused activities and independent work.
We regularly encourage children to edit, improve, share and evaluate their own work and that of their peers as an integral part of each unit of work.

We celebrate each individual child to be confident, curious and ambitious by reflecting and affirming pupil identity in the texts we choose and the context we teach.

All children have the opportunity to experience a wide range of texts, whether in full or as extracts, which are carefully selected by teachers for their quality.
These texts are regularly reviewed, with teachers aiming to ‘refresh’ one book from their list once a term.
We use CLPE’s ‘Power of Reading’ approach to foster a love of reading that goes beyond school. The five key areas covered are:
- Explore it: Questions to develop an awareness of language and vocabulary.
- Illustrate it: Visualisation skills to aid comprehension.
- Talk about it: Book talk to encourage referring to the text to support ideas.
- Imagine it: Thinking beyond the text and linking to real life.
- Create it: Writing in response to a text, developing imagination and creative ideas.

At Handsworth, we place a strong emphasis on developing confident, fluent readers from the very beginning. We begin teaching from Reception and continue to do so in Year 1 and Year 2. We teach phonics through the Read Write Inc. programme, a structured and highly effective approach to early reading and writing.

Daily phonics lessons

Children take part in a daily phonics lesson at the start of every school day. During these sessions, children learn to:

Recognise and say sounds (phonemes)
Blend sounds to read words
Segment words for spelling
Read with increasing fluency and confidence

Lessons are fast-paced, engaging, and carefully structured to ensure all children make strong progress.

Assessment and groupings

Children are regularly assessed every six weeks to ensure they are working at the correct level and making expected progress. These assessments allow us to:

Place children in a phonics group that best matches their needs
Quickly identify and support children who may need extra practice
Ensure children are meeting their target sounds and reading goals

This responsive approach helps every child to succeed.

Reading at home

To support reading at home, children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 are sent home:

A fully decodable reading book that closely matches the sounds they are learning in their Read Write Inc group
Areading for pleasure book to be shared and enjoyed together

The decodable book allows children to practise reading independently using the sounds they know, while the reading for pleasure book helps to develop vocabulary, language skills, comprehension, and a love of reading.

Writing in Read Write Inc

Writing is an integral part of the Read Write Inc programme and is taught alongside reading from the very start. Children are taught to use their phonics knowledge to spell words accurately, beginning with simple sounds and gradually progressing to more complex spelling patterns. During lessons, children practise segmenting words into sounds, forming letters correctly, and applying their phonics skills to write words, phrases, and sentences. As children become more confident, they are supported to write with increasing independence, focusing on handwriting, spelling, and sentence structure. This systematic approach ensures children develop the skills they need to become confident writers as well as readers.

Beyond phonics

Once children have securely developed their phonics knowledge and completed the Read Write Inc programme, they move on to the Accelerated Reader programme. This supports children as they develop stronger reading comprehension and stamina, allowing them to choose books that are carefully matched to their reading level and to demonstrate understanding through quizzes completed in school.

Through this structured and supportive approach, we aim to ensure all children become enthusiastic, confident, and capable readers.

How parents can help at home

Parents and carers play a vital role in supporting children’s reading development. You can help your child by:

Reading regularly with your child and encouraging daily reading where possible
Supporting your child to use their phonics skills when reading their decodable book by saying the sounds and blending them together, rather than guessing words
Encouraging your child to reread their phonics book several times to build confidence, accuracy, and fluency
Sharing the reading for pleasure book together, talking about the story, characters, and illustrations
Introducing and explaining new vocabulary and encouraging your child to use new words in conversation
Asking simple questions to support comprehension, such as:
- “What has happened so far?”
- “How do you know that?”
- “What do you think will happen next?”

We encourage parents to keep reading sessions short, positive, and enjoyable, celebrating effort and progress. This partnership between home and school plays a key role in helping children become confident, enthusiastic readers.

How we teach Spelling at Handsworth

At Handsworth, we are enthusiastic about literacy. We believe it is effective to explicitly teach spelling and provide pupils with opportunities to practice rather than test them.

In EYFS and KS1, reading and spelling skills are taught through the Read Write Inc. systematic synthetic phonics programme. Daily phonics sessions develop children’s ability to decode words, build fluency, and apply their phonics knowledge to both reading and writing. Children read carefully matched decodable books that align with the sounds they have been taught, ensuring success and confidence as early readers.

Spelling is introduced in Reception through the use of ‘Fred Fingers’, where children learn to segment words into individual sounds and match these to letters. This supports children in making plausible phonetic attempts in their early writing. Alongside this, children learn ‘Red Words’, which are common exception words that are not fully phonetically decodable. These words are explicitly taught and revisited regularly so children can read and spell them accurately.

As children move into Year 1, they continue to apply Fred Fingers to segment increasingly complex words and learn alternative graphemes for sounds. They build confidence in spelling words independently and begin to apply their knowledge across the curriculum. In Year 2, pupils further develop their spelling skills by exploring common spelling patterns, suffixes and prefixes, and revisiting common exception words. Children are encouraged to proofread their work and make informed spelling choices.

In Key Stage Two, children are given spelling lists to learn weekly. These are taken from the EdShed Spelling Shed programme, for which children will have a login, and are directly linked to the Year 3/4
and Year 5/6 statutory lists.

Each week, there will be a focus around specific spelling rules, eg ‘Words with suffixes where the base word ends in -fer’ or a similar focus on addressing common misconceptions: ‘Words that are
homophones or near homophones’.

These words are also taught in class through early morning learning tasks, English lessons and through a standalone spelling session each week. Children are taught to identify other words that
use the same spelling patterns and are encouraged to use the weekly spellings in their writing (as well as all age relevant statutory spelling words). There are no weekly tests, although teachers may choose to include retrieval quizzes to help children recall spellings from previous weeks.

How we teach Reading at Handsworth

At Handsworth, we understand that reading underpins the whole curriculum and opens up the world to the individual child.

We aim to teach reading to the highest level possible and enable all pupils to become fluent readers. We believe that every child has the capability to be a reader and aim to develop a lifelong love of reading. We model good reading habits, encourage book talk, and choose high-quality literature that reflects the diversity of our school community.

Reading and comprehension are developed through daily literacy sessions using high-quality texts. In Reception, there is a strong focus on developing language through partner talk, oral storytelling, and retelling familiar stories. Children begin to sequence events, discuss characters and settings, and demonstrate understanding of what has been read to them, supporting the Early Learning Goals for comprehension.

In Year 1, pupils build on these foundations by answering questions about texts, making predictions, and discussing vocabulary. They develop fluency through repeated reading and begin to read with increasing pace and accuracy. By Year 2, children engage with a wider range of texts and develop more advanced reading skills. They are introduced to VIPERS (Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explain, Retrieval, and Sequencing), which provides a structured approach to comprehension. Pupils begin to justify their answers using evidence from the text, explore the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary, and retrieve key information. They also continue to develop fluency, reading with greater expression and confidence.

Children who complete the Read Write Inc. programme in KS1 transition onto the Accelerated Reader programme in line with Key Stage 2 practice.

In KS2, reading skills are taught through daily guided reading sessions. Pupils develop their inference, explanation and retrieval skills as well as predicting and summarising/sequencing. High quality texts
are used for whole class reading sessions where the teacher and pupils both read aloud. These sessions allow the teacher to listen to each child read every week and give the whole class an opportunity to discuss the texts together as they read. After a shared reading session, the children answer a range of questions independently. These are based on Literacy Shed’s VIPERS (Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explain, Retrieval, Summarise/Sequence).

From Year 3 onwards, all children will also take part in the Accelerated Reader programme. This also applies to those in KS1 who have completed the Read Write Inc programme.

Accelerated Reader is an accredited reading tool which gauges children’s understanding of texts and next steps. Termly, children will complete an assessment which ascertains their progress and gives a
ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) score from which a picture of their reading age can be obtained. From this ZPD, children will be given a range of books from which they can choose to read,
eg: 4.8-6.2. They will take a book from this range home and read. Please listen to your child read aloud and, if possible, read with them to help aid their comprehension. When they have finished reading a book, they must take a quiz in school to assess their understanding of the book they have read. Scoring 80% or above shows that they have understood the book well and they are reading at the right level.