Intent

At St Bede’s Catholic Primary School, we are committed to developing confident, articulate communicators who can express themselves clearly in both spoken and written form. Our English curriculum is designed to ensure all pupils,  develop a love of reading, writing and language whilst acquiring the essential skills they need to succeed academically and in the next stages of their life.

Our curriculum is underpinned by our Catholic values and aims to broaden pupils’ cultural capital through exposure to high-quality texts and diverse writing opportunities. We recognise that strong transcription skills, particularly handwriting, are fundamental to freeing pupils’ cognitive capacity to focus on composition and creativity.

Implementation

Early Writing: Foundation for Success

In Early Years and Key Stage 1, we follow the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Framework and the Development Matters guidance to build strong foundations in early writing. Our approach focuses on two critical strands:

Transcription Skills:

• Phonics: We use Little Wandle,  a systematic synthetic phonics programme to ensure children can segment and blend sounds effectively, enabling them to spell words phonetically
• Letter formation: From the earliest stages, children learn correct letter formation through outdoor and indoor multi-sensory activities including sky writing, sand trays and tactile resources
• Fine motor development: We provide daily opportunities to strengthen hand muscles through activities such as playdough manipulation, threading, cutting and mark-making in various media

Handwriting Development:

• Children begin by developing gross motor skills through large-scale mark-making and movement activities
• We introduce pre-writing patterns (lines, circles, zigzags) to build the muscle memory needed for letter formation
• Letter families are taught systematically, ensuring children understand starting points and directional movements
• We make explicit links between phonics learning and handwriting practice, reinforcing the connection between sounds and written symbols

Progression to Composition: As transcription skills become more automatic, we gradually introduce composition elements:

• Oral storytelling and rehearsal of sentences before writing
• Shared and modelled writing to demonstrate the writing process
• Independent application of phonics knowledge in simple captions and sentences
• Introduction to basic punctuation (capital letters, full stops)

Writing

Writing is valued as a fundamental skill developed from early years through to year 6 and beyond.

At St Bede’s, we have adopted the CUSP writing curriculum from Year 2 to Year 6. In Y1 we continue to secure the basic elements of transcription to ensure pupils are secure in the foundations and requirements of the National Curriculum. Children are taught to develop enjoyment, vocabulary, knowledge and skills in writing as they progress through the school. Each year, children benefit from flexible modules, which focus on transcription and basic skills, developing pupils’ fluency in writing. They are taught to write at length with a heavy emphasis on vocabulary, grammar, punctuation and imagination. Rich knowledge and tier 2 and 3 vocabulary are woven into many different genres (such as narratives, different reports, autobiographies, balanced arguments, poetry) which we then revisit later in the year to make sure the substantive and disciplinary knowledge is embedded and enhanced. Our writing curriculum is carefully sequenced to ensure that the NC is covered and explored in depth and with enjoyment and inspiration.

Handwriting is taught using the programme, Letter-Join. Pupils learn pre-cursive handwriting in Year 1 moving to cursive handwriting in Year 2. In Key Stage 2, pupils continue to develop their speed, fluency and presentation of handwriting. Our children are taught to write letters, instructions, reports, recounts, lists, diaries, notes; they are taught to use pencils, pens, keyboards, touchscreens – all in a bid to motivate them, and inspire them to write.

Reading

At St Bede’s Catholic Primary School, reading is highly valued and promoted to be enjoyed and as an essential life skill. Children are encouraged to become confident, fluent and enthusiastic readers. We want every child to be a reader, giving them the ability and skills to access learning across the curriculum, use reading competently and confidently in their everyday life, as well as grow a love for reading and all of the opportunities that come with it.

We also recognise the importance and impact that reading widely and choosing quality texts, allows children to develop a lifelong love of reading. We strongly advocate, promote and support our children to become lifelong readers.

Our teachers love read to our children and we recognise the importance of the teacher as an inspirational role model.

Teaching a child to read is the greatest gift that we can give a child in our school. Because of this, we see it as a primary purpose of our curriculum. From Early Years to Year 6, we ensure that our children not only learn the skills and knowledge to enable them to read, but also to develop positive life-long dispositions and attitudes towards reading – that will take our children through secondary school and into adulthood.

Teaching children to ‘decode’ or ‘read’ in its most basic form is a key driver for our Early Years and Key Stage 1 curriculum. Once children can ‘read’, through a robust and systematic approach, the world opens up to them. It is our duty to ensure that our children are ready to embrace both the literary and wider world. We use the ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised’ scheme of learning to deliver our phonics teaching in our school; we have had extensive support from the regional ‘English Hub’ to ensure best practice is seen in this vital aspect of our work.

More information on the  ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised’ scheme for parents can be found here.

We know that reading at home is equally as important as reading in school. We want our children to have access to high quality texts whenever they read. With this as our inspiration, all children in KS1 are provided with a Big Cat reading book to take home and read alongside a library book. Depending on the child’s phonic ability, each child in KS2 is either provided with a Big Cat Rapid Catch Up reading book or a book from the school library. The books provided are fully decodable and are matched with the phonic ability of the reader.

The reading curriculum is deliberately designed to be ambitious and aspirational, ensuring that every child leaves our school as a competent, confident reader. Drawing on the latest research around explicit vocabulary instruction, reading fluency and key comprehension strategies, this curriculum is a synthesis of what we know works in helping children make outstanding progress in reading and a distillation into consistent, well-structured practice. The clear structure and principles ensure that teaching is progressive, challenging and engaging and the rich, diverse literature spine acts as both a mirror so that every child can see themselves in the core texts and as a mirror to engage pupils with experiences beyond their own field of reference.