Children in years 1-6 have a 40 minute reading lesson every day. This is because we believe reading is the key to all learning. In Year 1 and the first part of Year 2, children’s lessons focus on the RWInc reading programme. Alongside this, children in year 1 and 2 receive a daily 20 minute Read Write Inc Phonics lesson. Children in years 2-6 move onto the Read Write Inc Spelling programme when they are secure in their knowledge of phonics.

Children move onto the Whole Class Reading programme as soon as their phonic knowledge and reading fluency are secure.

The programme supports and challenges both basic and more competent readers

Develops their skills through reading a wide range of carefully selected literature including fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

Children read a mixture of complete books (these are also a focus of class story time) and carefully chosen extracts arranged into themes. These themes may match current topics studied, religious festivals, PSHE topics, or song lyrics and poems.

The books and extracts are supported by well-thought-out, structured teaching materials that stimulate discussion about the text

Class story time gives all children the opportunity to discuss and analyse high quality texts

In Years 3 to 6, the class novels also form the basis of our writing curriculum. These are chosen to represent a variety of genres and themes.

Reading Together

We all know that reading opens the door to all learning.


A child who reads a lot will become a good reader.

A good reader will be able to read challenging material.

A child who reads challenging material is a child who will learn.

The more a child learns the more a child wants to find out.

In the Calstock and Stoke Federation, we provide our children with a writing curriculum which enables them to become confident, creative and independent writers, who are well able to articulate their own ideas. 

We support our children to develop transferable skills, which they can use across the wider curriculum and throughout their lives. We use educational visits, high quality literature, film, art and music as stimuli for writing, which links learning to real life experience and provides a contextualised, meaningful curriculum. 

We want to inspire children to be confident in the art of oracy and be able to use discussion to develop their learning. The skill of fluency in speaking, writing and reading, empowers children and allows them to be effective communicators in a modern world.

In the Calstock and Stoke Climsland Federation, we strive to help our children develop into articulate and imaginative communicators, who are well equipped with the skills they need to become life-long learners; English learning is key in this.

We aim to ensure all of our children develop a genuine love of language and the written word, through a text-based approach; this links closely to the way we teach reading, as the text that we use in writing lessons, where possible, is the same text as the one that we use in reading lessons.

By focusing on four core purposes of writing: to entertain, to inform, to persuade and to discuss, we ensure that children develop an understanding of how widely writing is used in everyday life and, therefore, how important and useful the skills are that they are learning.

Our intentions in writing are for children to:
Write for a purpose

See themselves as real writers

Take ownership of their writing

See writing as an interesting and enjoyable process

Acquire the ability to organise and plan their written work.

Each writing cycle runs over three weeks and includes the following steps:

Immersion (linked to the class novel): discussing and investigating the features of the genre and generating ideas for writing.
Text interrogation and shared writing: focus on grammar, punctuation and spelling.
Co-construct: shared and modelled write with discussion around writing similar to focus genre with an emphasis on structure, vocabulary and grammar.
Summarising and sequencing storyboards, maps, research and notes.
Planning: story mapping and text organisation
Drafting: independent writing based on planning and shared writing.
Editing: focusing on the technical aspects of writing.
Redrafting: rewrite to develop authorial voices and language choices.