English

Reading and Phonics

Through our reading curriculum at Hiltingbury Infant School, children explore a rich world of books, stories and new ideas, developing their vocabulary, imagination and understanding of the world. They belong to a reading community where books are shared, enjoyed and celebrated, and every child is supported to experience success. Through systematic phonics teaching, carefully matched books and rich reading experiences, children grow into confident, fluent and enthusiastic readers with a lifelong love of reading.

Intent

Our reading and phonics curriculum is designed to ensure that every child becomes a successful reader. Through high-quality, systematic phonics teaching and carefully matched reading books, children learn to decode accurately, build fluency, develop comprehension and grow in confidence. We enable children to explore the world through books, belong to a culture where reading is valued and celebrated, and grow into confident, enthusiastic and lifelong readers.

Implementation

At Hiltingbury Infant School, we teach reading through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds programme, ensuring a consistent and systematic approach to phonics across the school. Phonics is taught daily from the start of Reception, enabling children to build secure knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences and develop the skills needed to decode words accurately and fluently.

Children read fully decodable books that are carefully matched to their phonic knowledge, ensuring that they experience success and develop confidence as readers. Reading practice sessions take place regularly and focus on developing decoding, prosody and comprehension skills. Children take home books that closely match their current phonic knowledge so that they can practise and consolidate their learning with increasing fluency.

Any child who is at risk of falling behind receives timely assessment and targeted support through Little Wandle keep-up or catch-up interventions, allowing them to keep pace with their peers. Regular assessment informs teaching and ensures that support is adapted to meet individual needs.

Alongside phonics, we promote a love of reading through daily story times, class reading, well-stocked book corners and access to a wide range of high-quality texts. Through carefully chosen books, children develop vocabulary, comprehension, curiosity and a deeper understanding of the world around them.

By providing consistent, high-quality phonics teaching and rich reading experiences, we enable children to explore the power of books, belong within a reading-rich culture and grow into fluent, confident and enthusiastic readers.

In Year R, children take part in Drawing Club, using exciting stories to inspire imagination, talk and early writing. Children have opportunities to visit our school library, where they can explore, choose and enjoy a wide range of books. These experiences help children discover favourite authors and stories, share their enthusiasm for books and develop a lifelong love of reading.

Impact

As a result of our reading and phonics curriculum, children leave Hiltingbury Infant School as confident, fluent and enthusiastic readers. They are able to decode accurately, read with increasing automaticity and understand what they read. Through exposure to a wide range of high-quality texts, children develop a rich vocabulary, strong comprehension skills and a genuine love of reading. Our children see themselves as readers, choose to read for pleasure and are well prepared for the next stage of their education and lifelong learning.

Assessment of Reading and Phonics

Assessment is an integral part of our reading and phonics curriculum and is used to ensure that all children make strong progress. Through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds, children are regularly assessed using the programme's assessment materials to check their knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences, blending and reading fluency. Assessment outcomes are used to identify children who need additional practice and ensure that timely keep up sessions are provided so that children can keep pace with the programme.

Teachers use ongoing formative assessment during daily phonics lessons, reading practice sessions and shared reading activities to monitor children's application of phonics knowledge, fluency and comprehension skills. Summative Little Wandle assessments take place at key points throughout the year and inform future teaching, intervention and book matching.

Children's progress in reading is reviewed regularly through reading practice sessions, phonics assessments and comprehension activities. Any child identified as being at risk of falling behind receives additional support through targeted intervention. Outcomes are shared with parents and carers, enabling a strong partnership between home and school in supporting reading development.

The impact of our phonics teaching is further measured through the statutory Year 1 Phonics Screening Check alongside our ongoing assessment of children's fluency, comprehension and attitudes towards reading.

SEND and Inclusion

We are committed to ensuring that every child develops the skills, confidence and enjoyment needed to become a successful reader. Our phonics and reading provision is inclusive and responsive to individual needs, with high expectations for all pupils. Teaching is carefully adapted where needed, using approaches such as additional modelling, repetition, visual support, carefully matched resources and targeted practice. Regular assessment helps us to identify children who need additional support so that timely, focused teaching can help them keep up and make progress. For children with SEND, provision is personalised appropriately, working closely with families and other professionals where necessary, while ensuring that every child experiences success and develops a positive identity as a reader.

Key Vocabulary

· Phoneme – The smallest unit of sound in a word, e.g. c-a-t has three phonemes.

· Grapheme – The letter or group of letters that represents a sound, e.g. s, ai, igh.

· GPC – Grapheme-phoneme correspondence: knowing which sound a letter or group of letters represents.

· Digraph – Two letters that make one sound, e.g. sh, ch, ai.

· Trigraph – Three letters that make one sound, e.g. igh in night.

· Blend – Putting sounds together to read a word, e.g. c-a-t → cat.

· Segment – Breaking a word into its individual sounds to help spell it, e.g. ship → sh-i-p.

· Pure sound – Saying a phoneme clearly without adding an extra ‘uh’ sound.

· Tricky word – A word containing a part that has not yet been taught or does not follow the phonics knowledge children currently know.

· Decodable book – A reading book carefully matched to the sounds and words a child has been taught.

· Fluency – Reading accurately and increasingly smoothly, with appropriate expression.

· Comprehension – Understanding and talking about what has been read.

· Keep-up – Additional Little Wandle teaching and practice to help children who need extra support to keep up with their peers.

· Prosody – Reading aloud with appropriate expression, phrasing and intonation.

Further information shared at our Phonics Information evenings can be found here.

Writing

At Hiltingbury Infant School, we strive for our pupils to be intentional, passionate writers who are confident with writing across the curriculum for a variety of purposes. We ensure this by delivering a well-structured, progressive curriculum which teaches children the essential skills they need for success within Writing in small, manageable chunks. Supported by highly intentional modelling, children will develop not just a proficiency in grammar but also how this is used within their writing, preparing them for the increasing demands of Key Stage 2 and beyond.

Intent

As detailed in the Writing Framework (2025), being proficient at writing is a key skill not just within education but throughout life. Research shows that an ability to express ideas clearly and write fluency increases available opportunities. For children to have the best success, their writing needs to be of a high quality. We aim for all pupils, regardless of their needs, abilities or background, to develop fast, fluent, legible and fully automatized handwriting to reduce the cognitive load expended on the content of their writing; and for this content to be grammatically accurate as well as effective for its purpose.

Implementation

In EYFS, we support children’s development in writing by engaging in daily handwriting practice. During the initial stages of reception, teaching shall focus upon building the muscles necessary for handwriting, including thumb, wrist and shoulder muscles before progressing to learning the movements that will later form letters. Teaching shall also focus upon correct pencil grip and appropriate posture for handwriting. Following this, children shall engage in mark making activities that echo the horizontal, diagonal, vertical and circular strokes needed for writing before teaching how to form all lower-case letters in line with their phonics learning.

During phonics teaching, children will also have practise in segmenting words to aid accurate spelling, a necessary skill to be successful as they progress into Key Stage 1. Throughout continuous provision, children are also provided with opportunities to write in a relevant context, such as within role-play kitchens, shopping lists or instructions.

Overwhelmingly within EYFS, children need opportunities to talk. Learning to communicate verbally is a vital precursor to written communication and we support this by ensuring that adults model high-quality language and appropriate questioning. Along with Drawing Club, in which children are exposed to high-quality texts to respond to, this supports children in developing and using a wide range of vocabulary and language structures. While children are still developing their ability to form letters and spell, most composition will be oral to allow those foundational skills to be fully embedded and to ensure that children remain motivated and passionate about writing.

Within Key Stage 1, we ensure that writing remains context-driven and imaginative through the inclusion of high-quality texts within each learning journey as a stimulus for writing. This reduces cognitive load by focussing children’s writing onto a shared experience, the text, which allows for all children to succeed, regardless of their background. These high-quality texts, as well as drama activities to embed the events of the story in children’s memory, further expose the children to an excellent model for language and allow them to experiment with using language appropriately.

To reduce the barriers to children’s learning, we continue to support children with their spelling through phonics lessons, in which children are explicitly taught how to use their knowledge of graphemes to aid their spelling, and the automaticity of their handwriting by engaging in daily handwriting practice. By the end of Key Stage 1, all children will have been taught how to correctly form all lower-case and upper-case letters, in addition to numerals and punctuation marks and will be starting to join their handwriting to aid increasing fluency.

Impact

As a result of this, children leaving EYFS will be able to express themselves in full sentences, including vocabulary that they have learned from stories and other texts they have listened to. They shall demonstrate an ability to form legible letters and hold their pencils in an effective way for future fluent writing (tripod grip). They will also be able to write simple phrases and sentences, using their knowledge of segmenting to pick appropriate graphemes.

Within Key Stage 1, children will become increasingly able to express their ideas, feelings and understanding through writing. They shall demonstrate an emerging ability to adapt their writing to suit different purposes and they will have a clear understanding of the purpose of grammar. Moreover, they will start to appreciate that writing is for a reader and they should have an awareness of the audience when they are writing.

Assessment

Assessment for Learning is used continuously throughout delivery of lessons at Hiltingbury Infant School to ensure that all children receive the support they need to develop their writing. In addition to responding to children’s work through marking, teachers will also give verbal feedback throughout a lesson, as well as adapting future lessons to address any necessary misconceptions. Regular opportunities are given to children to demonstrate their progress, including an independent piece of writing each half term.

Pupil Progress Meetings are held termly to enable the year group teams to discuss the progress of children within their class and how to ensure that all children experience success.

To monitor the delivery of the writing curriculum, Writing Lead and SLT will engage in learning walks, book looks, pupil and teacher voice, formative and summative assessment and will continue to deliver purposeful CPD to ensure high-quality delivery of lessons.

SEND and Inclusion

As with all areas of the curriculum, Hiltingbury Infant School believes that all children belong and we are committed to ensuring high expectations for all learners. All teachers are highly skilled at using assessment to adapt learning to suit the needs of everybody in the classroom, and provide scaffolds or other support to ensure that all children can make progress. Sometimes, pupils may require a differentiated learning journey from the rest of the cohort to enable them to make optimal progress. This is always with the aim to accelerate progress and decrease the gap towards age-related expectations.

KEY VOCABULARY