“The more that you read, the more that you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr Seuss
English
At Lily Lane, we believe that our English curriculum should empower all of our children to become fluent readers and writers. Our aim is to develop skilled readers who have a love of reading. We aim to equip children with the tools to decode and understand a wide range of texts that are written for different purposes and to be able to think critically about what they are reading. Our updated reading curriculum has reading behaviour and reading attitudes at its core, developing confident readers who are able to apply their reading skills in all areas of life. We have carefully designed a curriculum that is rich in quality texts that serve to provide children with a fundamental access to vocabulary and provide words in new contexts that they may not see elsewhere. Inclusivity is at the heart of reading at our school and we want our children to read books from an increasingly wider range of authors who come from backgrounds that reflect our children’s own.
As we want all our pupils to leave Lily Lane being able to navigate the rest of the education system, we provide different levels of intervention for children are not reading and understanding texts at age-related expectations.
Phonics and Early Reading
At Lily Lane Primary School, we are dedicated to nurturing strong reading skills and a love for reading from an early age. To support this, we use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised Programme, a phonics system that is recognised and validated by the Department for Education. Little Wandle is a comprehensive, systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme developed by schools to meet the expectations of the National Curriculum, helping children become confident, fluent readers.
Our Approach to Reading
We believe that learning to read is the foundation for all learning. At Lily Lane, we teach essential literacy skills, aiming to develop capable, enthusiastic learners who are eager to engage with books. Our goal is not only to teach children how to read but also to inspire a lifelong love of reading.
Phonics Lessons and Practice
From Nursery through to the end of Year 1, children participate in daily phonics lessons as part of the Little Wandle programme. These lessons introduce children to phonics sounds in a structured way, ensuring that each child builds confidence and fluency. Alongside these lessons, children read books carefully matched to their reading level, allowing them to read with success and satisfaction.
In addition, our reading practice sessions focus on three key skills:
Decoding – breaking down words into sounds,
Expression – reading with emotion and intonation, and
Comprehension – understanding what they read.
Children also bring home the books they’ve practiced with so they can share their reading progress with family members.
Additional Support
We understand that children develop reading skills at different paces. For those who need extra support, we provide targeted phonics sessions that revisit previously taught lessons. These sessions focus on improving sound recognition, blending skills, and overall reading fluency to ensure every child has the foundation they need to succeed.
At Lily Lane, we are committed to creating a supportive, encouraging environment where all children can grow into confident, enthusiastic readers. Together with you, we look forward to sharing in your child’s reading journey!
To find resources that support parents to understand phonics and reinforce learning at home, please click here.
To hear the pronunciation of the phonic sounds – please click the links below.
Little Wandle for Home and School
Click on the link here to take you to a page on the Little Wandle website which has resources to support parents with singing and learning Nursery Rhymes at home. This is a great way to support your child at the beginning of their Phonics journey.
Reading
Children experience reading in many different ways at Lily Lane: children are read to by teachers and we have a reading spine of exciting books by diverse authors that the teachers read from; classes enjoy shared reading during English lessons; guided reading takes place in larger or smaller groups according to need and children read individually in school and at home.
Our school is awash with books of all shapes, sizes and descriptions: children have access to books from our Little Wandle phonics scheme, levelled readers, classroom libraries, our library and our reading sheds on the playgrounds. Our reading culture is strong and children love to seek out something special to read. We have regular reading assemblies to celebrate books, reading and readers.
Reading is a partnership and we value all the parental support children receive: it is very important that children read at home to an adult, and that they are sent into school with their reading book each day.
Writing
Our writing curriculum at Lily Lane uses quality texts, themes and subjects as the starting point for units of writing. The children study books by diverse authors that have been chosen for their quality, appeal and inspiration.
Our Writing Cycle helps the children build the skills they need to write for different purposes in a progressive way. The Writing Cycle has been designed to hone the children’s authorial voices and understand a text’s purpose and design. Children first look at the text they are studying, thinking about RAFT (Reason, Audience, Features, Tone). Reading comprehensions forms part of the initial part of the cycle, where children discuss and examine the text to gain a comprehensive understanding of the text. We will also explore the grammatical features of the text at this stage and learn about why authors make the choices of language and vocabulary that they do. Drama, word games and role play are used throughout this first stage of the Writing Cycle.
As far as possible, we try to integrate our teaching of punctuation and grammar into the writing cycle for a text type, but occasionally there will be stand-alone work on grammar. The second part of the Writing Cycle has an emphasis on shared writing. Planning of this writing is taught explicitly and teachers model how to write from a plan. Shared writing allows children to see their teachers as writers who "think aloud" and share their thought processes. The final part of the cycle involves the children writing independently. At all stages, children are encouraged to take responsibility for their writing, with peer-editing and individual editing forming an important element of their work.
To teach spelling, we use the No Nonsense Spellings scheme of work in Years 1 to 6. We regularly recap previously taught spelling rules in order to broaden the children’s retention and allow opportunities for the children to remember and practise what they have learnt. We have low-stakes and collaborative spelling tests each week, only after the children have had taught spelling sessions. This is to build children’s confidence and celebrate success. Spellings are differentiated for children who are not working at age-related expectations.
In order to teach handwriting, we use the Letter Join scheme of work. Children have regular handwriting lessons throughout the week that aim to build their fine motor and letter joining skills. Our aim is to enable our children to become fluent and rapid writers, so that they can better concentrate on composing texts.