Reading and writing are at the heart of our curriculum. Children are encouraged to find out new things, deepen their understanding, and widen their vocabulary by reading, writing and exploring texts. The quality texts for each year group have been carefully mapped out to provide challenge and deepen understanding of the curriculum.  

Reading  

At Elson Junior School, we believe that becoming a fluent and confident reader opens the door to every other subject and helps children develop a lifelong love of learning. Across the school, children read a wide range of high-quality fiction, non-fiction, heritage texts and poetry.  

Fluency is at the heart of our approach. Children practice reading accurately, at an appropriate pace and with expression. In lessons, teachers use techniques such as echo reading (where pupils repeat after the teacher) and choral reading (where the class reads together) to strengthen fluency and confidence.  Children explore new vocabulary, and through teacher modelling, learn to make inferences, retrieve information and summarise what they have read. New vocabulary is explained, displayed and children are encouraged to use it independently, both orally and in their writing.  

Our aim is for all children to be confident, fluent readers by the time they leave school and be ready for the next stage of their education.  Colour-banded books are used initially to support readers until children feel confident enough to choose and borrow books to take home from the school library.  

Writing Learning Journeys  

Teachers use a carefully planned three-phase learning journey to guide pupils through the full writing process — helping them take their imaginative ideas and turn them into polished, purposeful pieces. Each learning journey is thoughtfully sequenced, so every year builds on the last, allowing children to grow in confidence, skill, and pride as writers.  

HIAS  model 

• Stimulate and Generate – Children are hooked and immersed into their learning through exciting starting points such as drama, real-life experiences, film clips or high-quality texts. This stage builds imagination and enthusiasm for writing. 

• Capture, Sift and Sort – Pupils explore examples of great writing (“reading as a reader” and “reading as a writer”) and gather ideas. They develop their vocabulary, study structure and language choices, and plan how to express their own ideas effectively. 

• Create, Refine and Evaluate – Children draft, edit, and refine their work, using workshops and feedback to improve. They learn to take pride in their writing and reflect on how to make it even better. 

We champion the use of WAGOLLs (What A Good One Looks Like) — high-quality examples of writing that show pupils what success looks like at each stage of their writing learning journey. These exemplars help children understand how to meet the purpose of their writing, whether it’s to entertain, inform, or persuade.  

Children who join Year 3 who need support with phonics phases 1-5 work through Project X Code intervention.

Handwriting 

At Elson Junior School, we use Letter-join to teach handwriting because it makes learning to write neat, joined, and confident, fun and engaging for all children. Letter-join is an interactive and multi-sensory handwriting scheme that helps pupils develop a clear, consistent, and fluent style of writing — both in school and at home. 

Spelling  

At Elson Junior School, we use the No Nonsense Spelling Scheme to learn spelling patterns and rules, statutory words, common exceptions and personal spellings using varied, engaging methods (visual, auditory and kinesthetic.)  No Nonsense Spelling teaches spelling using a 'Little-but-often' structure allowing pupils to revisit and review, learn new strategies, practice and apply.