At St Joseph's Federation, we want our pupils to be confident and fluent readers and writers. Our reading and writing curriculum is designed to engage pupils and provide a broad and balanced education that meets the needs of all pupils with differing needs.

Our aim is to develop confident, independent and successful readers and writers who have high aspirations and are ready for the next stage in learning. To ensure this, we use evidence-based and impact proven schemes of work to  support our children in their reading, writing and overall language development.

Teaching phonics and reading begins in Nursery and is primarily taught through the Read, Write Inc. Scheme of work.  It is a DfE validated systematic Synthetic phonics programme specifically designed to teach early reading and writing and takes place every day in school in Nursery, Reception, Year One and Year Two. Children are assessed at regular intervals throughout the programme in conjunction with Accelerated Reader. Once pupils have completed the Read, Write Inc. programme and can read fluently and independently they progress to using the Big Cat Collins as transition into Key Stage 2.  We recognise the pupil's need to develop strategic comprehension skills and teach this through small group and one to one reading where necessary.  

At St Joseph's we support parents and carers by holding regular reading and writing workshops to ensure that they are able to support their child to develop their reading skills and also a love for reading.

St Joseph's uses Ready Steady Write which is an award winning, research-informed and impact-proven writing scheme consistently across the Federation form Early Years to Year 6.  (EYFS, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2). Our writing curriculum has been carefully designed to support all children to master the foundational skills and write for a clear audience and purpose. 

Children are immersed in literature and taught to craft their writing with precision, using a range of pedagogical approaches, including sentence accuracy, modelled writing and shared writing, as well as regular opportunities for editing.  This ensures focussed attention is given to spelling, sentence structure, punctuation and composition. 

Handwriting is taught discretely through Letter Join which is a whole school handwriting scheme. This includes daily direct teaching with the application of pupils phonic knowledge embedded into writing lessons.

As a federation, we value spoken language as a foundation for writing and through structured talk, drama and vocabulary exploration as well as high quality interactions, pupils learn how to organise and express their ideas clearly before writing them down. Our aim is for every child – regardless of need – to write fluently and take pride in their work. We want our pupils to leave primary school as enthusiastic writers, ready for the next stage of their education. 

If you would like to find out more about how reading and writing is taught at St Joseph's, please do not hesitate to make an appointment to speak to a member of staff who will happy to assist you.