At Matthew Arnold reading plays a key part of the curriculum, including; reading for pleasure, guided reading, whole class reading, as well as teaching reading and comprehension skills. All pupils at Matthew Arnold are encouraged to read for pleasure and each class has a dedicated reading area stocked with quality, age appropriate texts aimed to engage a range of readers. We also use Literacy Counts: Ready, Steady Write to deliver our English curriculum, which instills a love of reading in our pupils.  Ready, Steady Write is comprehensive and evidence based. It provides a sequenced, ambitious curriculum, that places quality literature at its core. Our units have been carefully mapped out to match the entire statutory curriculum for writing.  

Regular opportunities are given for pupils to develop their reading and leadership skills throughout their time at Matthew Arnold, for example, pupils in year 5 and 6 are trained as reading ambassadors and support the reading of pupils in KS1, as well as being trained as librarians.

At Matthew Arnold, pupils are given opportunities to write for a range of purposes, not just in English lessons, but across the curriculum.  Through a consistent approach and quality first teaching, we aim to ensure that the writing our pupils produce, across the curriculum, is of a good quality. 

We teach spelling through 'Ready Steady Spell', this is a progressive systematic spelling programme from Year 2 up to Year 6. It covers all National Curriculum expectations progressively for all these year groups. It provides full coverage, in a cyclical way, by providing opportunities to reinforce and embed learning systematically and interactively