At Oakley School, our English curriculum is ambitious and enriching, fully aligned with the National Curriculum and designed to develop confident communicators, skilled readers, and articulate writers. We believe language is fundamental to learning, identity, and understanding the world.
Reading sits at the heart of our curriculum. Through carefully chosen, high-quality texts and across the wider curriculum, children are encouraged to read widely and often — for pleasure, knowledge, and personal growth. We nurture a genuine love of reading, ensuring every child experiences its joy, meaning, and power.
Writing is purposeful and meaningful. Children learn to write clearly, accurately, and creatively for a wide range of audiences and purposes — from storytelling and explanation to persuasion and recording learning across the curriculum. A strong focus on vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure enables pupils to communicate with confidence and precision.
Oracy and language development underpins all learning. Regular opportunities for discussion, performance, explanation, and debate develop children’s thinking, deepen understanding, and build confident, articulate speakers and attentive listeners.
Our aim is that every child leaves Oakley School as a fluent reader, a confident communicator, and a lifelong lover of reading and language — equipped with the skills and passion to succeed in school and beyond.
At Oakley Primary, early language development is at the heart of everything we do. Research consistently shows that the early years are a critical window for language growth, shaping children’s learning, confidence, wellbeing and long-term life chances. The National Literacy Trust’s “Early Words Matter” campaign highlights that many children in the UK start school without the communication, language and literacy skills needed to thrive, and that this disproportionately affects children experiencing poverty.
We respond to this through a rich, intentional language curriculum built on high-quality adult–child interactions, storytelling, shared reading, songs, play, and a language-rich environment. Our approach prioritises meaningful conversations, strong vocabulary development, listening skills, and inclusive communication strategies, ensuring language is embedded in every part of the school day.
We believe every child is a communicator. All pupils are supported to thrive in their language development, including children with SEND and those with English as an Additional Language (EAL). We adapt our teaching through visual supports, targeted interventions, specialist input, and inclusive strategies so that every child can access language, express themselves, and feel heard.
We also work closely with families, because strong language development starts at home. For practical advice and activities to support early communication, we encourage families to visit: https://literacytrust.org.uk/early-years/
How We Develop Early Language
To learn more about our approach, please click here to read our document outlining the different ways we develop early language at Oakley.
Oakley School Nursery Rhyme progression
Nursery rhymes play a vital role in children’s early language development. The National Literacy Trust highlights that sharing nursery rhymes supports children’s listening skills, vocabulary, memory and early phonological awareness, all of which are crucial foundations for reading and writing.
At Oakley, we place great emphasis on nursery rhymes throughout the Early Years and Key Stage 1. We have carefully designed a clear progression so that pupils regularly revisit, deepen and build their knowledge, ensuring they experience and learn a wide and rich selection of nursery rhymes by the time they leave Key Stage 1.
At Oakley School, we believe that spoken language is a powerful took for learning, expression and connection. Our Oracy Progression Document outlines a clear and ambitious pathway for developing students' speaking and listening skills from early years through to the end of their Primary School journey.
This document reflects our commitment to nurturing confident, articulate and thoughtful communicators. Whether through classroom discussions, presentations, performances or collaborative group work, we aim to ensure every child has the opportunity to find their voice and use it effectively.
We use the Voice 21 Framework along with current research about the importance of oracy and language development to ensure oracy sits at the heart of all subject disciplines.
Our EYFS and KS1 classes have developed their own Oracy Discussion Guidelines, inspired by the Voice 21 Framework to help develop oracy in our classrooms and empower and remind our pupils.
At Oakley School, reading is the foundation of learning and personal growth. It sits at the heart of our curriculum, with every learning theme thoughtfully designed around high-quality, inspiring, and diverse texts. Research shows that confident, fluent reading is key to success across all subjects and a powerful indicator of future achievement (National Literacy Trust).
Reading not only unlocks knowledge—it nurtures independence, expands opportunity, and empowers pupils to shape their own futures.
Our aim is to equip every child with strong reading skills while fostering a genuine, lifelong love of reading. As Frederick Douglass so powerfully expressed: “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
Implementation
The teaching of reading is prioritised from the Early Years right through the school to fulfil our aim of creating passionate, willing and able readers.
We teach reading through a carefully structured approach that develops:
Decoding – so children can read words accurately and fluently
Prosody and expression – so they read with meaning and confidence
Comprehension – so they truly understand, interpret and enjoy what they read
This is supported by our systematic synthetic phonics programme, Little Wandle.
Children encounter rich, high-quality texts every day, not only in English lessons but across the whole curriculum. Whether they are exploring stories, poetry, information books or historical sources, reading is always purposeful and meaningful.
We work closely with our local English Hub, literary organisations such as the Stratford Literary Festival, and local bookshops including Warwick Books to ensure our reading curriculum is ambitious, current and of the highest quality. These partnerships enable us to offer rich, memorable experiences for our pupils, including regular author visits, book swaps, library visits, and meaningful engagement with the wider literary community.
Alongside this, we foster a genuine love of reading through carefully planned opportunities that inspire excitement, curiosity and enjoyment. We also engage with our English Hub for teacher and leadership development, including professional training and literacy audits, ensuring that our practice is continually evaluated, strengthened and improved for the benefit of every child.
Click here to read our Reading policy.
Impact
As a result of our strong, consistent approach to reading, pupils at Oakley School become confident, fluent and enthusiastic readers who are well equipped to access the full curriculum. They develop the skills to decode accurately, read with expression, and comprehend deeply, enabling them to engage meaningfully with a wide range of texts across all subjects. More importantly, children leave Oakley with a genuine love of reading — seeing it not as a task, but as a source of enjoyment, curiosity and empowerment. This foundation supports academic success, nurtures independence, and opens doors to opportunity, ensuring our pupils are prepared not only for the next stage of their education, but for a lifetime of learning.
At Oakley School we teach children to read through a systematic, synthetic phonics programme, ensuring that every child has the strongest possible start to their reading journey. We are proud to use 'Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised' progression to develop our young readers in Reception and Year 1. This provides a structured, consistent and highly effective approach to teaching early reading.
Little Wandle teaches children how to:
Recognise sounds (phonemes)
Match sounds to letters and letter groups (graphemes)
Blend sounds to read words
Segment sounds to spell words
The 'Foundations for Phonics' are established in our Nursery . It focuses on phonological and phonemic awareness through games, rhymes and oral blending in Nursery before moving to more formal phonics instruction in Reception. Please see our Nursery page for more information.
Phonics lessons are taught daily, and children practise reading using fully decodable books that are carefully matched to the sounds they have been taught. This means that children can experience success, build confidence and develop fluency right from the start.
Any child who needs extra support receives targeted keep-up sessions so that no one is left behind. Reading is closely monitored, and progress is checked regularly to ensure that every child keeps moving forward.
By using a consistent, evidence-based approach, we ensure that children at Oakley School become confident, capable readers who are ready to access the whole curriculum and enjoy reading for life.
To find out more about the order of the letters and sounds taught, and the terms that they are taught in, please read our progression document: Click here
Many more videos to support your child with their phonics, including Phase 5 sounds taught in Year 1, can be found on the Little Wandle parent page of their website:
At Oakley School, we know that reading for pleasure truly matters—and at the heart of this lies the power of book talk. Talk is central to all learning. As James Britton reminds us, “Reading [and writing] float on a sea of talk,” and we wholeheartedly agree. From the very start of a child’s journey at Oakley, we prioritise meaningful talk. Through our carefully designed curriculum, pupils are given rich texts, a wealth of vocabulary, and purposeful opportunities to discuss, question, and explore ideas together.
Every day, we immerse our pupils in stories—reading to them, reading alongside them, and sparking conversations that bring books to life. We delight in sharing stories, recommending authors, and helping children discover books that resonate with their feelings, experiences, and milestones. Whether through author visits, library trips, or our daily class reads, we embrace every opportunity to inspire a lifelong love of reading.
If you’d like to enrich your own “book talk” at home, this helpful guide from The Open University offers practical ideas and inspiration Book Chat Guide- click here
There are also these helpful videos from The Open University that model what book chat at home might look like:
Book Chat (4+)
Book Chat (7+)
Book Chat (9+)
Each week, children will bring a Little Wandle decodable reading book home, which contains sounds they have learnt. The main aim of this book is for them to read this to you at home to celebrate their learning.
Each week, they also have the opportunity to bring home one of our school library books to share with a grown-up at home. Please see our school library tab below for more information, including links for some suggested book lists for children of different age
As part of our dedication to inspiring a lifelong love of reading, we are working tirelessly to develop a brand new Lower School Library that nurtures curiosity, imagination, and joy in books.
Our kind and talented Secondary pupils in Art Club have lovingly designed and hand-painted a beautiful ‘Secret Garden’ mural, inspired by the classic by Frances Hodgson Burnett, creating a truly magical space for our youngest readers. The quote “She felt as if she had found a world all her own” is painted on the walls of the library to inspire our pupils to escape into wonderful worlds as they curl up with a book.
As a brand new school, we are in the early stages of developing this space, but we have already worked hard to make it warm, inviting, and rich with both new stories and timeless classics for our pupils to enjoy. Children enjoy weekly visits to the library, where they choose a Reading for Pleasure book to take home and share with their families. Working in partnership with Warwick Books and the Stratford Literary Festival, we have curated an initial book collection that we are incredibly proud of, and we look forward to growing and developing this special space as our school community continues to flourish.
We’re excited to be taking part in the National Year of Reading 2026, a UK‑wide campaign to make reading a joyful part of everyday life by connecting it to what children already love- whether that’s dinosaurs, football, cooking or stories at bedtime.
It is a Department for Education initiative, in collaboration with the National Literacy Trust, aiming to tackle the decline in reading enjoyment in the UK and reconnect people of all ages with reading as a relevant and immediately rewarding activity.
Families should have already received an email and seen announcements on our app—please keep an eye out for updates on the ways Oakley School will be getting involved throughout the year. We’d love every member of the family to join this mission: share what you’re reading in your child’s reading diary and/or on Tapestry so we can celebrate books across our community.
For simple tips to make your home a “reading home”, explore the family ideas here:
Thank you for partnering with us to inspire confident, enthusiastic readers.
Bookdrop Magazine by authorfy
We’re excited to share the latest edition of Bookdrop, a free digital magazine created with leading children’s publishers and the Open University Reading for Pleasure team.
At Oakley School, our writing curriculum is designed to fulfil the aims of the National Curriculum by developing confident, articulate writers who can communicate clearly, accurately and purposefully. We are committed to nurturing children’s ideas, imagination and growing command of language so they can express themselves effectively across a wide range of contexts.
We believe that children write best when their writing is meaningful, purposeful and inspiring. Writing at Oakley School is therefore rooted in rich, high-quality texts and authentic reasons to write — whether to entertain, explain, persuade, inform or reflect. Through meaningful experiences and real audiences, children come to understand that writing has value, impact and power.
Our vision is to create a culture where writing is not just a skill, but a voice — empowering every child to share their thinking, creativity and identity with confidence.
Implementation
Writing is taught through a carefully sequenced and coherent curriculum that balances creativity with technical excellence.
Children engage with high-quality literature and stimulating curriculum content that provides strong models of language, structure and style. These key texts underpin each writing unit. They are given frequent opportunities to write for a range of audiences and purposes across the curriculum, helping them to see writing as relevant, purposeful and meaningful.
Alongside this, we explicitly teach the core foundations of writing through well-planned, discrete lessons in:
Spelling
Grammar and punctuation
Sentence structure
Letter formation and handwriting
These essential skills equip children with the tools they need to write with increasing accuracy, confidence and independence.
In EYFS and KS1, writing is brought to life through 'Drawing Club' and 'Curious Quests', developed by Greg Botrill. This highly inclusive and imaginative approach uses rich stories, films, images and ideas to ignite curiosity and creativity. Children explore characters, settings and problems through talk, drawing and role-play before writing, enabling them to deepen understanding, expand vocabulary and develop ideas with confidence.
Creativity, inclusion and oracy sit at the heart of this approach. Every child is supported to access learning, contribute ideas and engage fully, regardless of starting point. The integration of talk, art and writing leads to high levels of engagement, rich language development and a genuine love of writing.
Impact
The impact of our writing curriculum at Oakley School is seen in children who are confident, motivated and capable writers.
Pupils develop:
Strong technical writing skills
Rich vocabulary and language structures
Creativity and imagination
Confidence in expressing ideas
Independence in applying skills
Pride in their written work
Children understand that writing is a powerful tool for communication, learning and self-expression. They leave Oakley School able to adapt their writing for different purposes and audiences, with the confidence to use their voice and the skills to shape their ideas effectively.
Our ultimate aim is for every child to become an enthusiastic writer who enjoys writing, believes in their ability and understands the power of putting their thoughts into words.
Our intent in teaching handwriting is to ensure all children develop secure transcription skills through direct, systematic teaching instruction, high-quality modelling, and consistent practice. We aim for every child to develop accurate letter formation, correct pencil grip, appropriate posture, and consistency in size and orientation of letters. By establishing strong foundations early, and maintaining clear, consistent expectations across the curriculum, we enable children to write efficiently, legibly, and with increasing automaticity, so they can focus on the content and quality of their writing rather than the mechanics. This coincides with our aim of developing confident and articulate writers.
Implementation
Handwriting is taught explicitly through frequent, structured lessons delivered by trained staff, following the Little Wandle Handwriting Progression. Teaching focuses on direct instruction, high-quality modelling, and supervised practice. Staff consistently model correct letter formation, starting and finishing points, orientation, pencil grip, and posture. Lessons use the Little Wandle formation phrases and ‘Ready to write’ checklist to reinforce consistency and shared language.
Handwriting is taught separately from phonics, ensuring a clear focus on transcription skills. Children are supervised when learning their correct formation, allowing misconceptions in letter formation or grip to be identified and corrected early. Skills are regularly reviewed, assessed, and revisited, with expectations applied consistently across all areas of the curriculum so that handwriting skills are reinforced in all writing opportunities.
Children develop fluent, legible, and automatic handwriting, demonstrating accurate letter formation, consistent sizing, and correct orientation. They write with confidence, using an efficient pencil grip and appropriate posture, enabling sustained writing without fatigue. As transcription skills become embedded, pupils are able to focus more fully on composition, vocabulary, and the quality of their ideas. Outcomes include improved presentation across the curriculum, increased independence, and stronger overall writing standards, ensuring pupils are well prepared for the next stage of their education.
