Our intent at Long Row is for every child to read with confidence and fluency, and write with real purpose and meaning. We strive for all children to take ownership of their reading and writing, seeing these as interesting and enjoyable life long skills. 

At Long Row, we teach phonics using Supersonic Phonic Friends, which is  created by Phonics' expert Anna Lucas. The programme is fully DfE accredited and provides a systematic, synthetic phonic approach ranging from the simple to the complex spellings of the alphabetic code. Our phonics scheme enables us to implement a robust, whole school approach to teaching phonics. Our high-quality phonics teaching ensures our children continue to be successful, confident readers as well as being able to apply each skill taught to their own reading and writing. Children in Year 2 gradually begin their transition to our Supersonic Phonic Friends Spelling programme, which we carefully tailor to meet the needs of our children.  

Please click below if you would like to find out more about Supersonic Phonic Friends, and to meet the characters!!  

https://www.supersonicphonicfriends.co.uk/

Years 3 - 6 have recently moved to the Supersonic Phonic Friends spelling scheme, which was released October 2023. The scheme covers the spelling rules and the common exception words detailed in the National Curriculum over a two year cycle. Spelling in KS2 is taught 3-4 times a week at the start of English lessons. Spelling words in years 3-6 and KS1 Supersonic Phonic Friends weekly newsletters are sent home for regular practice. 

At Long Row we promote and celebrate a love of reading. We pride ourselves on having a varied and diverse range of reading books to support all interests - these are available to children at all times with access to the school library and links with Belper library. Reading aloud to children is an important element of our whole curriculum to create our language rich school environment, which develops good quality conversation amongst children and adults in school. Through this, children learn more about Belper and the wider world in which they live. 

Reading is taught through a wide range of genres and topics. Books are available in most areas of provision in EYFS, adults model reading stories and one to one reading takes place in Reception to support phonics.  Good quality texts are used in English lessons, through story time and group reading from Year 1 through to whole class structured reading lessons in KS2. 

Grammar is taught through our writing curriculum and in-line with the National curriculum requirements. Prior learning is always revisited, revised, reinforced in all years. Children write from first hand experiences and interests which is often linked to quality texts and learning taking place in the wider curriculum. Writing is taught as a stepped approach, with tasks broken down into manageable chunks including staff modelling and independent writing through edit and review.