English

Oracy

What is oracy?

Oracy is the ability to articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage with others through spoken language. 

In school, oracy is a powerful tool for learning; by teaching students to become more effective speakers and listeners we empower them to better understand themselves, each other and the world around them. It is also a route to social mobility, empowering all students, not just some, to find their voice to succeed in school and life. 

The Oracy Framework

As a school working with the Voice 21 project, Hardwick Green Primary Academy uses The Oracy Framework as a tool to structure our oracy curriculum. The Oracy Framework, devised by Voice 21 and Oracy Cambridge, provides a structure through which we can understand what constitutes good speaking and listening in different contexts. It breaks down the skills within oracy into four distinct but interlinked strands: physical, linguistic, cognitive and social & emotional.

Progression:

EYFS

In EYFS we introduce the four strands – physical, linguistic, cognitive and social & emotional – and set one core oracy objective for each that gets to the root of each Framework strand. At this stage we put the emphasis on students’ fundamental oracy skills such as speaking loud enough to be heard, beginning to join ideas together, asking questions and taking turns.

KS1

For our Key Stage 1 we build on the ideas introduced in EYFS and have two or three interlinked objectives for each strand. Each objective is slightly more complex than the previous key stage and introduces more sophisticated vocabulary. At this stage we put the emphasis on beginning to have more self and audience awareness, considering which language is appropriate and thinking about speech being structured and purposeful.

KS2

For our Key Stage 2 we build on the ideas introduced in Key Stage 1 and have three or four interlinked objectives, each under the relevant subheadings for that strand. Each objective is more complex than the previous key stage and introduces more sophisticated vocabulary as well as demanding a little more thought to its application. At this stage we put the emphasis on adapting to different situations and audiences, tailoring speech to a particular audience and being more aware of group dynamics and how to influence these.

Oracy Progression

An overview of our approach to reading:

 

The Power of Reading (CLPE):

Teaching English and developing our children to become literate, fluent readers and writers is at the heart of the Hardwick Green Primary Academy curriculum and all taught English sessions follow The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education’s (CLPE) Power of Reading rationale and teaching sequences. Our children from Nursery through to Year 6 follow this, which ensures our children are given the opportunity to read a wide and diverse range of high quality texts and use their developing encoding skills to write in a variety of ways across the whole school curriculum. High quality texts are the foundation of our English curriculum, which continuously supports and develops children’s reading and writing skills. Children’s implicit and explicit knowledge of language, vocabulary and grammar is pushed through the quality, breadth and range of texts being read aloud, re-read, discussed and performed consistently.

 

Reading VIPERS:

We recognise that the Power of Reading approach on its own is not enough to ensure that all of our children fully master the art of reading comprehension. To enhance our curriculum, teachers build their questioning of texts around VIPERS.

VIPERS (created by Rob Smith, The Literacy Shed) is a range of reading prompts based on the 2016 Reading Content domains found in the National Curriculum Test Framework documents for KS1 and KS2. VIPERS is an acronym to aid the recall of the 6 reading domains as part of the UK’s Reading Curriculum. They are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts. At Hardwick Green, children’s exposure to VIPERS starts in Reception where specific reference and appropriate sentence-stems are also used.

The 6 domains focus on the comprehension aspect of reading and not the mechanics: decoding, fluency, prosody etc. As such, VIPERS is not a reading scheme but rather a method of ensuring that teachers ask, and students are familiar with, a range of questions. They allow the teacher to track the type of questions asked and the children’s responses to these which allows for targeted questioning afterwards.

Teachers use VIPERS to support children’s comprehension skills in whole class reading lessons. Children are exposed to new vocabulary, retrial and inference questions in every session. The children then further develop the different aspects of VIPERS through carefully chosen tasks often linked to specific year group shared texts.

Reading Progression - VIPERS

 

Fostering an early love of Reading at Hardwick Green:

From entering Nursery, our children are exposed to the highest quality texts through our CLPE English Curriculum. Throughout the day, staff encourage active listening, participation, and book talk as we immerse our children in stories, songs and rhymes.

For a child to be able to begin to learn to read they must be able to listen and understand spoken language. Through engaging in conversations and hearing stories, children are exposed to a wide range of words. This helps them build their own vocabulary and improve their understanding when they listen, which is vital as they start to take meaning from letters on a page. It is also important for children to understand how stories work. Even if a child does not understand every word, during story time they will hear new sounds, words and phrases, which they can then practise and perfect.

This whole school approach to a love of books and language is something that is embedded throughout the school from Nursery to Y6, and it is something that we are extremely proud of.

Hardwick Green Literary Cannon

Phonics at Hardwick Green Primary Academy

At Hardwick Green, we use Read Write Inc. Phonics (RWI) as our systematic synthetic phonics programme. This phonics programme gives your child the best possible start with their Literacy development. Mrs Gorman is our Phonics Reading Leader, so if you have questions about phonics, contact school who can refer you to her.

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Reading at Hardwick Green

 At Hardwick Green Primary Academy we aim for all our children to become fluent, confident readers who are passionate about reading. Children who read regularly or are read to regularly have the opportunity to open the doors to so many different worlds!

More importantly, reading will give your child the tools to become independent life-long learners.

We can achieve this together through:

• Read Write Inc, a program to help to your child read at school
• Encouraging children to develop a love of books by reading to them daily, at home and at school
• Giving children access to a wide range of books at school and at home

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What is Read Write Inc.?

RWI is a rigorous and structured programme which integrates phonics, comprehension, writing, grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary. It is carefully structured and designed for pupils in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. The alphabetic code is taught in a certain order to ensure that children learn to read and write grapheme/phoneme correspondences accurately and fluently. 

Once children become speedy at reading the first five sounds taught in Reception, they begin their journey to becoming independent blenders when reading words. We teach them how to use their reading routine ('Special Friends, Fred Talk, Read the Word') to read words accurately, build their fluency and become speedy word readers at each stage of the programme. Children then read matched texts, which only contain the sounds that they can read accurately. This means that your child will love bringing home their reading book and showing you what they have been learning in school. We ask that you support them in building their fluency at home by re-reading texts each day to develop their fluency, expression and their understanding of what they are reading.

RWI was developed by Ruth Miskin and more information on this can be found at https://ruthmiskin.com/en/find-out-more/parents/ 

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How will my child be taught to read?

Children in Reception have a daily phonics lesson for 20 minutes in the first half term. They work really hard to learn the first 25 sounds and begin to practice blending sounds to make words. Once they can read words, they will begin to bring home their reading books to practise their reading routine. As the year progresses, phonics lessons increase to 60 minutes by the end of their first year. In each lesson, children will learn/review a sound, read sounds speedily, read real and nonsense words, spell with Fred Fingers, complete reading activities linked to their matched storybook and complete linked writing activities to secure their growing understanding of the alphabetic code.

Your child will start to learn set 1 sounds in Nursery and Reception, some children will be ready to move onto set 2 sounds in Reception. It is important to remember that each child is individual and maybe ready to progress before other children. In Year 1 and 2, your child will continue to progress through set 1,2 and 3. If necessary, phonics lessons and interventions will also continue into Key Stage 2 as appropriate.

Sounds are taught in the following order. Click here to hear how to pronounce sounds correctly.

Set 1 

Set 2

Set 3

Fred Talk

We use pure sounds (‘m’ not’ muh’,’s’ not ‘suh’, etc.) so that your child will be able to blend the sounds into words more easily.

At school we use a puppet called Fred who is an expert on sounding out words! we call it, ‘Fred Talk’. E.g. m-o-p, c-a-t, m-a-n, sh-o-p, b-l-a-ck.

The following video is an example of blending sounds with Fred. 

Nonsense words (Alien words)          

As well as learning to read and blend real words children will have plenty of opportunities to apply their sound recognition skills on reading ‘Nonsense words’. These words will also feature heavily in the Year One Phonics Screening check in the summer term. 

The Year 1 phonics screening check is a short, light-touch assessment to confirm whether individual pupils have learnt phonic decoding to an appropriate standard.

• It will identify the children who need extra help so they are given support by their school to improve their reading skills. They will then be able to retake the check so that schools can track pupils until they are able to decode.  

Click here for further information on the Screening check.

Reading Books

Children will be introduced to ‘Ditty books’ when they successfully begin to read single words. The short vowels should be kept short and sharp. Children will initially use the 'Fred Talk, Read the Word' strategy to read words. As they become more confident they will begin to 'Speedy Read' some words.

In all the books children will have red and green words to learn to help them to become speedy readers. Red words are words that are not easily decodable and challenge words to extend children’s vocabulary. Green words are linked to the sounds they have been learning and are easily decodable.

       

Dots and dashes represent the sound each letter makes.

During the RWI session, children will read the book at least three times and at each new reading, they will have plenty of opportunities to practise using their developing comprehension skills. You may have heard your child talking about ‘hold, edit or build a sentence’.

Hold a sentence is an activity that encourages children to remember a whole sentence while focusing on spelling and punctuation.

Build a sentence is to give children the opportunity to create their own sentence to that shows the meaning of a word and edit a sentence allows the children to critique a sentence using their knowledge of spelling punctuation and grammar. Children complete a longer piece of independent writing, which gives them the opportunity to show off their creativity and to practice their spelling, grammar and punctuation.

Spelling

Children will use first use ‘Fred fingers’ to first sound out a word before they write it down.  Children learn how to spell rather than just be tested. Furthermore, this way of teaching spellings allows children to use Fred fingers whenever they are stuck with spelling a word. Children pinch each sound on fingers before writing the word.

Order of Story books

The below table sets out the expected progress for RWI Story Books across Reception to Year 2. The aim is that all children should have completed the RWI phonics programme by the end of Autumn Term in Year 2.

Reception	Ditty sheets Red Ditty Green Purple
Year One	Purple Pink Orange Yellow Blue
Year Two	Blue Grey

 

To help at home

Your child will start to bring books home when they are confident readers. Please help them to read and give lots of praise!

If you have any other questions about RWI, please see your class teacher or Mrs Gorman

 

✏️ Writing at Hardwick Green Academy

At Hardwick Green Academy, we are proud to deliver a rich and balanced writing curriculum that inspires creativity and builds technical skill. From Year 2 onwards, once pupils complete the Read Write Inc. phonics programme, they engage in a blended approach combining:

CLPE’s Power of Reading – A literature-based programme that fosters a love of reading and provides meaningful contexts for writing.
Grammarsaurus Writing Construct – A structured framework that supports grammar development, genre-specific writing, and progression through model texts and scaffolded tasks.

Together, these approaches ensure our pupils become confident, capable writers.

Power of Reading

Developed by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE), this programme:

Enhances reading and writing attainment
Encourages a lifelong love of reading
Integrates reading, writing, speaking, and listening
Supports whole-school literacy development

Grammarsaurus Writing Construct

Grammarsaurus provides:

• Genre-specific model texts
• Grammar, punctuation, and spelling resources
• Writing progression frameworks

Its structured approach includes diagnostic tasks, text deconstruction, short writing bursts, full-text composition, and assessment.

How It All Comes Together

The Power of Reading builds knowledge and engagement with texts, while Grammarsaurus enhances this with explicit grammar instruction and writing scaffolds. This combination supports all learners and aligns with the DfE Writing Framework, which emphasises:

• Writing as foundational
• The importance of oracy
• Explicit teaching of writing skills
• Regular practice and fluency
• Support for struggling writers
• Smooth transitions between key stages
• Strong leadership and assessment practices

Our approach to grammar & punctuation

In Reception, Year 1 and 2, grammar and punctuation is mostly taught through the writing element of 'Read Write Inc'. which is a complete literacy programme, as well as being a systematic synthetic phonics programme.

We use the Grammarsaurus structured framework to ensure children develop a strong grasp of grammar, genre-specific features, and writing progression through model texts and scaffolded tasks.

While Power of Reading focuses on deep engagement with literature and creative responses, Grammarsaurus adds:

• Explicit grammar instruction
• Genre-specific writing scaffolds
• Clear progression and assessment tools

Together, they offer a balanced literacy curriculum—rich in creativity and grounded in technical skill.

The long term plan of which grammar and punctuation elements are introduced when are detailed below.

Grammar & Punctuation Curriculum

Our approach to spelling

From reception, children are taught spelling through Read Write Inc - our systematic, synthetic phonics programme.

Once children have completed Read Write Inc (around Autumn term Year 2), they move on to RWI Spelling to continue their journey to become fluent spellers. This is taught for 15-20 minutes each day, with an teacher or TA leading the session.

Although the teaching of phoneme-grapheme correspondence underpins this programme, it also develops children’s knowledge of word families, how suffixes impact upon root words, and provides mnemonics to remember the trickiest spellings.

The teaching revolves around instruction (with the help of online alien characters), partner and group practice, and competitive group challenges that help children commit new words to memory.

RWInc Spelling Progression

 

 

 

In September 2023 Hardwick Green introduced Kinetic Letters as our new handwriting curriculum. This programme covers four key strands:

The benefits of our Kinetic Letters handwriting curriculum are:

• Automaticity – Formation, orientation and placement of letters becomes automatic which frees up space in the working memory.
• Achievement – Fast, legible and fluent handwriting underpins success in every curriculum area.
• Confidence – Good handwriting creates a positive initial judgement.
• Creativity – When handwriting is automatic, the brain can concentrate on content.
• Reading – Writing and reading are reciprocal skills, so improvement in one, helps the other.
• Phonics and Spelling – legible handwriting means children can read and correct spelling.