WRITING

Grace Cook's approach to building our young learners’ skills in writing goes across the curriculum. Cross curricular writing provides the perfect opportunity for our children to write for a purpose and practice their language and writing skills. Here at Grace Cook, cross curricular writing is used in all year groups across the school, giving children a chance to write using their knowledge of topics and events. Staff carefully plan for extended writing opportunities which are engaging and are exciting for all our children.

Children at Grace Cook are also encouraged to take pride in the presentation of their work and children learn correct letter formation when they join us in Early Years.

Our spelling programme helps our children to practice their spelling in a motivational and engaging way. 

READING

Developing a love of reading and a rich and deep understanding of language and vocabulary is a key factor in our learning, development and future success.

Grace Cook offers a growing library packed with exciting, high quality texts that are constantly being updated and developed to engage and stimulate our children’s love of reading, imagination and reading adventures. Children at Grace Cook are continually encouraged to share our love of books and as a school we promote a positive reading culture and celebrate the magic of learning through books. Our school has a daily time-tabled reading/ story sessions where everybody, even the teachers, spend time enjoying books and developing their comprehension skills.

At the heart of our curriculum is a rich and diverse literature spine, which helps to frame learning from across the curriculum. Pupils will read and share a wide range of ambitious texts throughout the day, including songs and poems, that are designed to promote a love of reading, build pupils’ vocabulary and encourage discussion and deep thinking about key moral, ethical, social or cultural issues.

Teachers bring reading to life and help our children to discover their inner reading voice through modelling in class how to bring reading alive.

At Grace Cook we use Read Write Inc (RWI) to help our children learn to read in Early Years and Year 1 and as children move into Year 2 they are introduced to whole-class reading sessions. In these sessions, the children focus on specific elements of their reading.  (Watch the RWI Sound Pronunciation Guide here.)