We want all our children to SHINE as readers, writers and communicators.

How do we teach Literacy at Cookham Rise? 

Children begin their reading and writing journey at Cookham Rise through the RWI Phonics and RWI Get Writing programmes.  During Year 2, children move onto the Literacy Tree scheme of work, developing their love of reading and writing through a range of high quality, diverse and exciting books.

Immersion in a text

Both RWI and Literacy Tree encourage children to get involved with whole texts rather than extracts. This enables them to be fully immersed with each text type.

Clear purpose

We aim to provide children with a clear purpose to all reading and writing tasks. Whether it's an invitation to the headteacher to attend a class assembly, an email to an author or an article for a school newsletter, our children know why the quality of their writing matters: because there will be a real audience for their published work.

Focused on strategies

We ensure that specific reading strategies are modelled explicitly to the class; this provides children with a holistic bank of skills to draw upon. This could include scanning a text, making an inference, predicting or creating a mental image. Our staff use scaffolded reading, fluency reading, extended reading or close reading. 

Drama to engage and inspire

The use of drama is such a powerful tool and staff use a range of techniques to promote the exploration of characters, situations and historical events. This process expands the pupils' imaginations, and provides them with the ideas they need to give their writing that extra spark and flair.

Rigorous teaching of spelling and phonics

In Reception and Year 1 children are in smaller groups for RWI This means that all children can benefit from tailored teaching, making maximum progress as a result. From Year 2 onwards we use the RWI spelling scheme. 

Grammar concepts taught through our key texts

Children begin to understand grammar concepts, and start to apply them in their own writing, when they start to read with a writer's mind. Punctuation rules and techniques are drawn from shared texts; texts which the children have already been immersed in and have a good understanding of. 

Handwriting

We use the RWI handwriting scheme throughout the school, beginning with a focus on correct letter formation in the Early Years and developing cursive handwriting from Year 2 upwards.