Learning Spellings needs to happen at school and at home and there is a high expectation within the new National Curriculum that pupils will learn many increasingly complex words. At Phoenix, the children learn spellings in six-week blocks and a the children are introduced to a range of strategies for learning their spellings. This enables pupils to choose the strategies they find most effective for learning different words. The learning strategies that are taught are detailed below.

Above, high in the sky, floated a hot air balloon. Fearfully, one of the occupants was wondering what might happen if there were a storm. He searched for land. Waiting, he listened to Eminem on his MP3. Bradley,, who was on his first flight, suddenly needed the toilet. Desperate and anxious, he searched around for a hole in the bottom of the basket.

In weaker writing, sentences mostly begin with a noun, or the definite article (The); verbs are also often connected by and, then, or so. Use A CARP PIE to gain more marks by making your sentences more interesting – either by varying the way you begin the sentence, or by using punctuation or a relative pronoun to change the middle of the sentence.

"Handwriting is a skill which, like reading and spelling, affects written communication across the curriculum. Given effective teaching, handwriting can be mastered by most pupils by the time they are seven or eight years old enabling them, with practice, to go on to develop a faster and more mature hand ready for secondary school and adult life. The surest way to ensure consistent teaching and the development of legible, fluent joined handwriting throughout the school is to have a written policy agreed and put into practice by all staff. Handwriting is a movement skill, children need to practise handwriting movements correctly and often. The first handwriting lessons are vital and the most important issue is to ensure that the children we teach learn to form the letters of the alphabet with the correct sequence of strokes from the beginning. The correct formation of all letters needs to become quite automatic and may require a lot of practice."

Suzanne Tiburtius of the National Handwriting Association

AR is a powerful tool for monitoring and managing independent reading practice. With AR, teachers can create a reading programme to meet the needs of every pupil.

Children using AR choose their own books to read, rather than having one assigned to them. This makes reading a much more enjoyable experience as they can choose books that are interesting to them. 

Teachers and librarians help your child choose books at an appropriate readability level that are challenging without being frustrating, ensuring that your child can pass the quiz and experience success.