Writing

Our writing curriculum is designed to provide a broad and balanced education that meets the needs of all children. We follow the award-winning Ready Steady Write from Literacy Counts to develop confident, independent and successful writers with high aspirations. Our writing curriculum is research-informed and impact-proven, carefully designed to support all children to master the foundational skills and write for a clear audience and purpose. Through the use of high-quality, vocabulary-rich texts, we provide exciting and meaningful reasons to write. Children are immersed in literature and taught to craft their writing with precision, using a range of pedagogical approaches, including sentence accuracy, modelled writing and shared writing, as well as regular opportunities for editing. We value spoken language as a foundation for writing. Through structured talk, drama and vocabulary exploration, children learn how to organise and express their ideas clearly before writing them down. Our aim is for every child – regardless of need – to write fluently and take pride in their work. We want our pupils to leave primary school as enthusiastic writers, ready for the next stage of their education.

Reading 

Reading has an exceptionally high status at Laddingford. Reading is prioritised through our classrooms and wider school environment, but our curriculum is also interwoven in such a way that our children receive high-quality reading input all of the time. Laddingford St Mary's reading offer consists of reading for pleasure, fluency, and comprehension. This ensures that children gain the skills necessary for them to access and make sense of the world around them. 

Dedicated time is given in our timetables to ensure reading is prioritised: this includes ERIC (Everyone Read in Class) time daily, and whole class story share at the end of each day. We have a wonderful group of avid reading helpers that volunteer within our school and enjoy listening to our pupils read each week.

Children at Laddingford St Mary's are encouraged to experience a wide range of texts from fiction, non-fiction to poetry across all of the subjects they study. Our school follows the Little Wandle Phonics programme from Nursery to Year 2. Children are informally assessed regularly and 'catch up keep up' sessions are delivered to close any gaps that may emerge. When children have completed the phonics programme they move on to Spelling Shed lessons and EdShed VIPERS comprehension lessons.

To support the delivery of reading comprehension, children from Year 2 to Year 6 use red A4 books with handwriting lines. The presentation expectation within these books requires children to employ their neatest, cursive handwriting and answer questions in complete sentences.

We use EdShed+ VIPERS to support our reading comprehension lessons. The fundamental consideration of reading comprehension is for children to enjoy and understand what they are reading. Therefore, not all lessons are evidenced in books but instead we use discussion and drama to really get 'underneath' the ideas.