English at Mill Mead
English sits at the heart of our curriculum and our approach seeks to fully prepare children for a life full of reading and writing.
Reading Intent
At Mill Mead, reading lies at the heart of our school. We aim to instill a lifelong love of reading, encouraging our children to step into and explore the many different worlds that books can offer. Through reading, we develop skills that enable our pupils to express themselves creatively and imaginatively, communicate effectively and confidently, and develop empathy for themselves and those around them. These skills are not only at the heart of what it means to learn at Mill Mead, but are equally essential in enabling our children to achieve their potential in life, both within and far beyond primary school.
Our curriculum intent and our school values, to be Honest Respectful Resilient Kind Brave Responsible Reflective, both inform and enhance our approach to the teaching of reading. These values are embedded in school life at Mill Mead, particularly within our chosen texts and the way in which we approach reading (see writing map). In partnership with parents, we aim to promote high standards of both spoken language and comprehension of the English language. We believe that our approach ensures the personal development of each and every child, with the ultimate aim of cultivating their love of reading and learning. Our core texts across the school are chosen carefully to instill all these aspects: things that make learning to read here at Mill Mead different to any other school.
Our Implementation
Mill Mead’s implementation of the reading curriculum is shaped by the needs of our children, our intent and our school values. The detail below outlines how we implement our intent towards reading, and should be read alongside our phonics and English maps for further detail.
Phonics
Here at Mill Mead, phonics is taught using Bug Club, a fun and engaging approach to learning letters and sounds. Using this as a basis, we personalise the Bug Club approach to ensure it caters to the unique needs of our cohorts and school.
In nursery, children begin their Bug Club journey where they will focus on the following 7 areas:
- Environmental Sounds
- Instrumental Sounds
- Body Percussion
- Rhythm and Rhyme
- Alliteration
- Voice Sounds
- Oral Blending and Segmenting
In Reception, we provide a systematic, synthetic phonics programme, which ultimately teaches our children how to read and write. Our approach instills an understanding of the main sounds, which then leads to blending sounds into spoken words. This equips children with the skills they require for reading and writing, providing a stable foundation to build upon throughout their school journey.
Details of the progression of phonics teaching can be found in the reading folder on our website on the document entitled ‘Phonics Progression’.
During discrete, daily lessons, children in reception are exposed, on average, to up to 5 new sounds a week quickly progressing through all necessary sounds to access books. These are then recapped and revisited in order to consolidate, support and challenge individual children. By the end of Reception, children will have been exposed to all main sounds: the integral building blocks of reading.
Within a Phonics lesson, children are taught:
- Grapheme-phoneme (letter-sound) correspondences
- The skill of blending (synthesising) phonemes in order to read words
- The skills of segmenting words into their constituent phonemes to spell
- That blending and segmenting are reversible processes
- How to articulate phoneme clearly and precisely
- Letter formation
- Tricky words – these are words which cannot be phonetically decoded and must be learnt by sight.
In Year 1, the key sounds are revised and consolidated in preparation for the Phonics Screening Test. In year 2, phonics is still taught to those children who require support with their phonological awareness and understanding.
Whilst we recognise and promote the importance of phonics as a foundation to enable children to read confidently, we also recognise how critical it is during early reading exposure that children listen to, and enjoy, a variety of stories and texts. Our texts, documented within our English map, represent the books we feel all children here at Mill Mead should read and, additionally, are linked to our curriculum intent and school values. In a similar vein, we also use this exposure to core texts to develop and enhance children’s comprehension of what they are reading or listening to.
Daily Supported Reading (DSR) – Reception, Year 1 and Year 2
Within Key Stage 1, alongside synthetic phonics, we use Daily Supported Reading (DSR) to embed our approach to early reading at Mill Mead. The approach aims to inspire and challenge children from the start of their reading journey, ensuring and maximising individual progress. Subsequently, we strive to create fluent readers, who are independently motivated. Every day, a trained adult works with a small group of children, exploring books that are specifically matched to their current reading attainment, and employing techniques used to enhance autonomy and independent problem solving. Each group reads two carefully selected books across Monday-Thursday, which leads to rapid progress and exposure to a large volume of varied texts. Additionally, twice a week, the children in Key Stage one partake in a “Bigger Picture” lesson, in line with our use of Destination Reader (DR; KS2) focusing on whole-class comprehension, using a class extract or text. Children then move through the banded books, until they become a “free reader”.
DSR (+ whole-class comprehension) is used, for age-related children as detailed below:
Reception – from Spring Term
Year 1 – all year
Year 2 – Autumn term for those children still requiring support
Destination Reader (DR) – Year 2 (when children are ready) & Key Stage 2
Our curriculum is founded upon high-quality texts that have been carefully and deliberately selected for each cohort. Within Key Stage 2, we use Destination Reader (DR) to inform our approach to teaching reading, whilst ensuring the texts used are personalised to our curriculum, mapped to ensure progression and reflective of our values. DR is a whole-class approach to reading which ensures that all children, even less-confident readers, are exposed to high-quality texts and teaching. Reading lessons occur daily, with the aim of deepening the children’s understanding of the texts they read, through the systematic use of strategies focusing on: predicting, making connections, asking questions, evaluating, inferring, summarising and clarifying whilst also exposing children to relevant and challenging vocabulary. Talk and oracy form a central part of these lessons, further promoting collaborative learning alongside independent development. Bigger Picture lessons on Friday focus on comprehension, where children are able to apply the skills they have been focusing on in lessons. Where possible, the texts used are mapped to class History and Geography foci and, therefore, can further influence writing pieces across the curriculum.
Assessment of Reading
Our curriculum is founded upon high-quality texts that have been carefully and deliberately selected for each cohort. Within Key Stage 2, we use Destination Reader (DR) to inform our approach to teaching reading, whilst ensuring the texts used are personalised to our curriculum, mapped to ensure progression and reflective of our values. DR is a whole-class approach to reading which ensures that all children, even less-confident readers, are exposed to high-quality texts and teaching. Reading lessons occur daily, with the aim of deepening the children’s understanding of the texts they read, through the systematic use of strategies focusing on: predicting, making connections, asking questions, evaluating, inferring, summarising and clarifying whilst also exposing children to relevant and challenging vocabulary. Talk and oracy form a central part of these lessons, further promoting collaborative learning alongside independent development. Bigger Picture lessons on Friday focus on comprehension, where children are able to apply the skills they have been focusing on in lessons. Where possible, the texts used are mapped to class History and Geography foci and, therefore, can further influence writing pieces across the curriculum.
Home Reading
At Mill Mead, we provide and encourage regular opportunities to read independently, following lines of curiosity and interest, yet still ensuring our books are mapped to each individual’s reading attainment. We expect children to read regularly at home with their parents and carers and ideally ask for minimum times as detailed below.
Reception children will be given a phonetically decodable book to take home, containing the sounds they are currently learning, or have learnt, in their phonics lessons. This provides children with opportunities to practise and consolidate their phonics knowledge beyond the classroom. Children will continue with their allocated book until they are ready to progress to the next set of sounds. Alongside this, during their Reception year, children will begin to bring home a banded book matched to their current reading attainment. This will support the development of their comprehension skills alongside the application of their phonics and reading knowledge. Banded books will be changed weekly.
Finally, following a weekly trip to the school library, children will be given the freedom to choose a book of their choice, in order to promote reading for pleasure and encourage them to follow their curiosities. We ask that children in Reception read for 10 to 15 minutes at least five days a week.
In Key Stage One, some children will continue to bring home phonics books as they learn new sounds and embed their phonological awareness. All children will bring an appropriate banded book home which will be changed weekly. We ask that children in Key Stage One read for 15 to 20 minutes at least five times a week. Where children are capable of doing so, they can record their reading in their own reading records in Key Stage One. We kindly request that a parent or carer reads with them at least twice a week to ensure our partnership supports their reading.
We expect most children to reach ‘free reader’ level within Year 2 and from then, into Key Stage Two, they will bring home an age-related book from their class book corners, often alongside a free choice book from the library. These books have been divided into those pitched at age-related expectations, and those which aim to stretch and challenge children working at a greater depth. We ask that children in Key Stage Two read for at least 20 to 30 minutes at least five times a week. Where children are capable of doing so, they can record their reading in their own reading records in Key Stage Two. We kindly request that a parent or carer reads with them at least once a week to ensure our partnership supports their reading.
Ideally, we would like children to read daily at home to consolidate their school-base reading. Each time children read at home, they receive a ‘responsible leaf’ that correlates to a house point.
Our Library and Book Corners
Our desire to promote a lifelong love of reading extends beyond access to the books outlined above. We believe that children should be exposed to a wide range of high-quality texts, while also having the autonomy to develop their own reading preferences and interests. Alongside this choice, it is important that children have access to books that are appropriately matched to their reading ability and are suitably challenging in terms of content.
With this in mind, children visit our beautiful school library weekly, where they can choose from a vast and varied selection of fiction and non-fiction titles. This provides children with the opportunity to explore different genres, authors and subjects, encouraging them to develop their own interests and identities as readers.
Within each classroom, children also have access to a dedicated book corner, stocked with age-appropriate texts, both fiction and non-fiction, that offer an appropriate balance of interest and challenge. Our book corners also provide opportunities for children to explore and reflect upon our school values. We ensure that the books available reflect and celebrate diversity and inclusivity, while introducing children to a wide range of experiences, perspectives and issues.
The Types of Books We Send Home
| Type of Book | What does this mean? | When? |
| Phonics Book | A book matched to the sounds currently being taught in phonics and containing sounds that the child has been taught and can recognise. Children should read their phonics book at least twice before it is changed, allowing them to develop fluency, accuracy and understanding. Books will be changed weekly. These books provide children with opportunities to practise their segmenting and blending skills at home. Where assessments identify a gap in a child’s phonics knowledge, they may also be given an additional phonics book to support and consolidate their understanding. | Reception: when the first set of sounds are known (usually week three of Reception Year) Year 1: from September Year 2 onwards: If required due to phonics assessments |
| Challenge Book | Engaging and wider-reaching books that are banded in line with our DSR teaching. These books are carefully matched to children’s reading attainment and aim to develop comprehension skills alongside a love of reading. The final band within our banded books is White. Once children have been assessed as working beyond this level, they are considered ‘free readers’ and will move on to an age-related text from their class library. | Reception: when ready to access DSR Year 1: from September Year 2: from September until free-reader Year 3 onwards: only if not yet free-reader |
| Age-related Text | Books carefully selected to reflect age-related expectations in terms of both content and reading age. These books are identified by either one or two coloured dots. One dot indicates an age-related text, while two dots indicate a greater-depth text that provides additional challenge within age-related expectations. | Year 1: if free-reader Year 2: when free-readerYear 3 onwards: from September if free-reader |
| Free Choice Book | A book or other reading material chosen independently by the child, in addition to the books provided by their teachers. Free choice books allow children to explore their own interests and reading preferences. These should be recorded in reading records using the label ‘free choice book’. |
Writing Intent
At Mill Mead, we strive to help our children develop into imaginative and articulate communicators, across many different means of communication. Alongside a love of reading, we aim to instill a love of language and the written word, encouraging children to express themselves effectively and creatively through writing. Our writing curriculum links closely to our reading curriculum, regularly using high-quality, carefully-selected texts to inspire various writing outcomes across a number of different genres. In turn, with the texts often complementing history and geography topics nicely, our writing plan is wonderfully cross-curricula, integrating multiple aspects of the children’s learning and, therefore, making writing at Mill Mead both purposeful and individualised.
Writing Implementation
We believe that all elements of effective writing, including grammar and punctuation, should be relevant and meaningful. As such, we study different genres of writing and how writing techniques vary across them. We teach core components of successful writing, whilst exploring how these can be adapted and manipulated to write effectively for different purposes and audiences. It is this understanding of purpose and audience that drives our writing curriculum, showing children that their own words can have real impact. Subsequently, we encourage children to take ownership of their writing, seeing themselves as real writers, and enjoying the composition process.
The genre units are carefully mapped out across all year groups, ensuring effective coverage of both genre and skill school-wide. Each year group studies a variety of fiction and non-fiction. Within a unit, children explore a model text, carefully constructed using our personalised progression documents. Children follow a clear composition path, first immersing themselves into the text, familiarising themselves with key features, planning their own, writing their own and then editing their final piece. Despite units covering a number of weeks, children will complete an independent piece of writing every week as a minimum.
Feedback in writing
Our feedback policy works closely alongside our editing process. At Mill Mead, we believe that children should have full ownership of their work and their books. As such, teachers do not write in children’s books; instead, feedback is given verbally through the process of conferencing. Conferencing takes place weekly throughout the drafting process, either individually or in small focus groups, allowing teachers to provide personalised and meaningful feedback. This enables children to reflect on their learning, respond to feedback and make purposeful improvements to their work in real time.
Our use of coloured pens makes this process visible and helps children to take ownership of their learning. Following a conference with their teacher, children record the feedback they have received and act upon it using green pen. Purple pen is used to capture children’s own edits and self-reflections, encouraging them to identify areas for improvement and think critically about the quality of their work. Blue pen is used for peer comments and feedback, supporting children to develop their ability to evaluate and respond to the work of others. Together, these processes encourage children to become increasingly independent and reflective learners. Rather than simply receiving feedback, children are actively involved in evaluating, improving and refining their own work, developing the metacognitive skills needed to understand what they are learning, how they can improve and why those improvements matter.
Handwriting
At Mill Mead, we take great pride in the quality of our pupils’ handwriting and place a strong emphasis on developing a consistent, fluent and legible handwriting style. We use Letter-join’s online handwriting resource as the basis of our approach to the teaching and progression of handwriting. Children are taught to develop accurate letter formation, joins, size and spacing, enabling them to develop a fluent and increasingly automatic handwriting style. Further information can be found in our Handwriting Policy.
Spelling
We use Spelling Shed to deliver a structured progression of spelling, aligned with the spelling objectives outlined in the English National Curriculum. Pupils receive a weekly spelling lesson in which they are introduced to new words, their definitions and the patterns and rules that underpin their spellings. Lessons also explore links and similarities between spellings and sounds, helping children to develop a deeper understanding of how words are constructed and spelt. At the end of each week, children complete a spelling check to assess and consolidate their learning. This provides teachers with an opportunity to identify any gaps or misconceptions and inform future teaching.
Oracy
We promote oracy throughout the curriculum and ensure that these critical skills are taught progressively across the school. Our approach focuses on four key strands: physical development, language development, thinking and cognition, and social development. We recognise that strong oracy skills underpin children’s ability to learn, express their ideas, collaborate with others and communicate effectively. Through purposeful opportunities for discussion, questioning, explanation and presentation, we aim to develop children who are confident, effective and creative communicators. At Mill Mead, we believe that developing these skills not only enhances children’s learning across the curriculum, but also equips them with the communication skills they need to thrive beyond school.