English at Blackwell
At Blackwell Primary School we believe that English is a fundamental life skill. Lessons develop children’s ability to listen, speak, read and write for a wide range of purposes. Our children are enabled to express themselves creatively and imaginatively as they become enthusiastic and critical readers of stories, poetry and drama as well as of non-fiction and media texts. Children gain an understanding of how language works by looking at its patterns, structures and origins and we encourage them to use their knowledge, skills and understanding in speaking and writing across a range of different situations and subjects.
How do we teach children to Read and Write?
In Foundation Stage:
Read Write Inc
Phonics
Reading books
Letter formation
In Key Stage 1:
Phonics is taught using a mixture of reading schemes which are banded by difficulty. For more information please see the Reading Policy.
Reading books progression scheme
FS1 and FS2 have a daily ‘dough disco’ using playdough and children learn a range of actions (doughnut, sausage, nip and tuck, splat, pizza, diver, roll, squeeze, piano and ‘free style’) to build up muscles in their hands ready for writing and fine motor skills. This a fun time at the start of each day and many of the older children will happily show you the actions if you have some play dough at home!
FS2 and Year 1 children usually start to have spellings in the Spring term and parents/carers receive a 'Spelling Pack' of information, progression and expectations for spellings in FS and Key Stage 1. Children have a spelling book which their new spellings are stuck into each week. We have a weekly spelling test on Friday afternoon and then new spellings are added into the book and sent home ready for the cycle to repeat.
All children have a named individual set of ‘Gruffalo’ themed phoneme cards (speed sounds 1, 2, 3 and key words) based on the sounds that your child already knows and the next ones that they need to learn. Please keep these in your child’s book bag so that they are always handy for checking and updating in school.
We are continuing to borrow books from our class library and will continue to operate a one book in and one book out system as before, this should enable all children to change their library books more than once a week if they wish to.
World Book Day 2026- Dress as a Character that inspires you! Secondary Title
