At Lytham Church of England, we are passionate about nurturing a love for reading, writing, and communication in every child. Our English curriculum is designed to develop confident, articulate, and creative learners, helping children reach their full potential in both spoken and written English.

We understand that reading is the foundation of all learning. We believe that a love of reading is key to developing lifelong learners. Beyond our structured reading lessons, we actively promote Reading for Pleasure throughout the school. By encouraging pupils to explore a wide variety of genres and authors, we help them discover the joy and excitement that comes from immersing themselves in a good book. We provide opportunities for independent reading, library visits, and regular story time sessions where teachers share their favourite books. Our aim is to create a reading-rich environment that inspires curiosity, sparks imaginations, and fosters a lifelong passion for literature.

We believe that when children love to read, they develop a deeper understanding of the world around them, improve their language skills, and strengthen their creativity and empathy. By nurturing this enthusiasm, we help every child become a confident and happy reader.

Daily Guided Reading sessions, in Key Stage 2, focus closely and specifically on reading skills for comprehension. We focus on the key reading domains to help children develop strong comprehension skills. These domains include:

•          Retrieval: Finding information directly from the text.

•          Inference: Making sense of what’s implied but not directly stated.

•          Vocabulary: Understanding the meaning of words and phrases in context.

•          Prediction: Anticipating what will happen next in a story.

•          Summarisation: Condensing the key points of a text.

Guided Reading is carefully planned to provide differentiated instruction, ensuring that all pupils are challenged and supported at their level. Our sessions include group discussions, teacher-led questioning, and tasks designed to deepen understanding and critical thinking. Teachers use a variety of texts and extracts from a range of genres chosen to match the reader’s needs. Reading fluency is supported through our home-reading books with children selecting books at an appropriate level all the way from Reception to Year 6. Children are encouraged to read each night at home and parents are supported with how to read with their child.

Our reading phases lay the foundations for writing skills to be built upon with daily grammar warm-ups providing children with the correct writing tools for the writing outcomes. Teachers regularly model the text type and maximise the learning environment to support children’s writing quality throughout the teaching sequence.

As a school, we closely follow the Lancashire model of teaching English in a sequence. This ensures that we are providing opportunities for our children to write frequently and for a range of purposes and audiences.

Spelling is a vital part of writing, and we use the No Nonsense Spelling programme to ensure our pupils build strong spelling skills. This structured approach helps children learn the rules and patterns of spelling while developing a wide and accurate spelling vocabulary.

The No Nonsense Spelling programme is:

• Progressive: The teaching of spelling builds on previous learning from year to year.
• Focused on strategies: Children are taught strategies to help them spell unfamiliar words and remember key spellings.
• Engaging: Our spelling lessons are interactive, making the learning of spelling both enjoyable and memorable.

By integrating spelling into our writing curriculum, we help pupils apply their knowledge in meaningful contexts, improving both their accuracy and confidence as writers.

At Lytham, we are dedicated to delivering a high-quality English curriculum that prepares our pupils for the future.

Phonics

We are proud to be a 'Little Wandle' school. See th link below for further details about the teaching of phonics at Lytham CE School.