At Marner, we are committed to ensuring our children leave us as confident readers, writers and communicators. We use a range of strategies to teach our children the necessary skills to succeed in the English Language, and the wider world.

Our English texts are chosen carefully to either correspond with children’s learning across the curriculum or inspire their imaginations.

At Marner, we are committed to an Anti-Racist approach to our curriculum, and as such we are reviewing our current offer to ensure we are exposing children to a wide range of diverse authors and ideas. This is an ongoing task so there will be changes as this embeds.

Reading

At Marner, reading is at the heart of our curriculum and is recognised as a key skill that underpins learning, communication, and lifelong success. 

In the early stages of reading development, children learn to read through the THEP phonics programme, supported by carefully matched decodable books. Daily reading sessions are an essential part of the routine, helping children to build confidence, accuracy, and enjoyment in reading. Storytelling plays a key role in early reading development, with children using story maps to retell familiar texts and practise language specific to the stories they have read, supporting both comprehension and oracy skills.

Daily reading sessions across the school are carefully structured and focus on developing fluency skills through extended reads and close reading. These lessons give children regular opportunities to practise reading with accuracy, expression, and understanding, while also developing deeper comprehension of texts. Core books are thoughtfully planned and mapped across the year, with a strong focus on inclusivity and real-life issues, ensuring that children are exposed to a wide range of voices, experiences and perspectives.

Reading for pleasure is strongly promoted at Marner through a variety of engaging initiatives. Children are encouraged to explore diverse books through our well-stocked library and welcoming class reading corners. We foster a love of reading through activities such as the Marner Reading Challenge, where children create reading river posters to celebrate the books they have read, alongside fun competitions and events like “Whacky Read,” which inspires children to enjoy reading in imaginative and unusual places.

We follow the Tower Hamlets Education Partnership Phonics Programme: THE Partnership Phonics Programme.

Writing

At Marner Primary School, we believe children learn to write best when they are inspired, excited and fully engaged. Our writing curriculum is built around a rich literature spine of carefully chosen stories, non-fiction texts and poetry. These high-quality texts, alongside meaningful real-life experiences such as school trips and events like Dot Day, provide strong models for writing and help children see themselves as real writers.

Writing at Marner is taught through two key strands: transcription (handwriting and spelling) and composition(generating ideas and structuring content). Children are taught to plan, draft, edit and improve their writing with a clear understanding of audience, purpose and effect. Drama, storytelling and talk play a central role in our approach, allowing children to explore ideas and language before developing vocabulary, sentences and extended pieces of writing. Throughout their time at Marner, children write a wide range of fiction and non-fiction, including stories, poems, plays, reports and explanation texts.

In the Early Years and Key Stage 1, children develop confidence and enjoyment in writing through carefully planned, engaging activities. A strong focus is placed on accurate letter formation, clear handwriting and the use of phonics to support spelling. Children learn to organise their ideas, experiment with sentence types and apply basic punctuation and grammar. As they move into Key Stage 2, children build fluency and independence as writers. They learn to write for a range of purposes, using ambitious vocabulary and well-structured paragraphs, and apply their writing skills across the curriculum. Handwriting remains a priority, with children developing fluent, joined and legible script using Letter Join, while spelling is taught systematically using the Twinkl spelling scheme.

By the time they leave Marner Primary School, children are proud of their writing and confident in their ability to communicate their ideas, creativity and imagination effectively through language.