At Irby Primary School, we aim to provide children with an enriching English curriculum that ensures they have the skills to be successful in reading, writing, speaking and listening, spelling and grammar.
We aim to engage children through high quality texts and experiences. Skills in all areas are developed through sequenced progression and repetition to ensure positive outcomes for all children. Vocabulary and oracy development are central to all our lessons. We maintain high expectations for all learners, encouraging each student to achieve their full potential through a supportive and challenging learning environment.
Grammar
At Irby Primary School, we believe that grammar provides the building blocks of language acquisition and writing. It is taught systematically in all year groups, allowing children to build on their prior knowledge and to revisit key skills regularly. In order to support this, we use the Grammarsaurus PVPG (Place Value of Punctuation and Grammar) approach from year 1 onwards in Autumn term to build strong foundations at the start of each year. This approach is then referred to throughout the year to support children in their learning. In addition, Grammar is taught as part of every writing unit and supported with high quality texts.
Phonics
At Irby Primary, we follow the Phonics Bug programme – a focused, structured and systematic approach to teaching phonics. Phonics helps children learn to read and write by developing their phonemic awareness: the ability to hear, recognise and work with the sounds of the English language. Pupils are taught how these sounds link to written symbols (graphemes), building the foundations of confident reading and writing.
We place great importance on phonics in the early years, ensuring every child gains a strong start in their literacy journey. Our phonics sessions are kept short, lively and engaging. Each lesson follows a clear structure: revisiting a previously taught sound, introducing a new one, practising it in different ways, and applying it within sentence-level activities.
The programme is introduced in FS1 and continues throughout FS2, Year 1 and Year 2. This approach is continued in KS2 as an intervention for those children still needing phonics support.
Our reading books connect closely to the phonics knowledge pupils are taught when they are learning to read. Our sequence of reading books show a cumulative progression in phonics knowledge.
In order for our pupils to have sufficient practice in reading and re-reading books that match the grapheme-phoneme correspondences they know, children in Reception, Year 1 and, where appropriate in Year 2, will take home a phonic focused reading book. Children read from these books, which contain the sounds they know, while they are learning to read.
Phonics Bug Login
Book Talk
Reading is fundamental to everything we do at Irby Primary School. All children at Irby Primary School are exposed to a wide selection of high-quality texts, which will enrich their learning and inspire them to become lifelong readers. We encourage and support our children to read a wealth of books, including fiction, non-fiction, classics, picture books, stories from other cultures, and those with challenging themes. Our lessons are engaging and allow all children to participate in discussion and debate about texts. We aim to instil a lifelong love of reading in our children and to provide them with the skills they need to access all areas of the curriculum.
In early years and Year 1, children enjoy a wide range of picture books to complement their phonics learning and independent reading. From Year 2 onwards, the children take part in daily book talk sessions. This includes small group reading sessions, where every child is actively engaged as well as demonstration/independent comprehension sessions. Through this structured approach, the children build their reading fluency and comprehension skills, using a wide variety of high quality texts suitable for their individual reading level.
Reading At Home
Reading at home is a powerful way to support your child’s learning and help them develop a lifelong love of books. Just 10–15 minutes of reading each day can boost vocabulary, improve comprehension, and spark imagination. Whether it’s a bedtime story, reading aloud together, or encouraging quiet time with a favourite book, every minute counts. Our children bring home their reading book daily and we ask that you strive for five reads from it per week in order to help support your child’s reading journey.
