English at Wootton Lower School

At Wootton Lower School, we aim to offer our pupils a rich and exciting English curriculum that will help them to become confident communicators and prepare them for the world outside of the classroom.

Handwriting
Children are first taught to form all their letters correctly in print form. When children are developmentally ready they will then be taught the 'lead ins and lead outs' to effectively join their letters. Our approach breaks down the skill of handwriting into simple, bite-sized chinks. We model how to make correct joins and encourage children to join their letters whilst teachers provide 1:1 support for students who require additional help.

Spellings
RWInc Spelling is an interactive programme which teaches spellings in a fun and engaging way. Each unit is introduced with a short video. It helps children to learn spellings with common patterns and uses rules in order to help them recall spellings as well as teaching exceptions to these rules.
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Individual workbooks allow children to practise their spellings and the teaching naturally follows on from the Spell Review part of the RWInc phonics programme taught as soon as the children enter Wootton Lower School. As a result, the children are already proficient at using dots (for individual sounds) and dashes (for digraphs) and prefixes and suffixes can be added to root words to help them to spell with greater accuracy, understanding and confidence.

Giving children weekly spellings to be tested (even when they do score 10/10!) does not mean that they will apply these in their own written work. With our approach to the teaching of spellings, we hope to support and encourage your child to become both more confident and independent spellers which will help them become better writers. Revisiting spelling patterns and rules regularly is key to them becoming successful spellers.

To find out about our phonics programme, click here