PLEASE SEE BELOW THE ATTACHED DOCUMENTS FOR LITERACY AND MATHS

WHAT ARE WARBOYS PRIMARY ACADEMY (WPA) ESSENTIALS?

From Year 1 to Year 6, we have a set of WPA Essentials that children and all staff should know. These are basic expectations that must be mastered for a child to be at AGE RELATED EXPECTATIONS (ARE). They usually include targeted spellings, key punctuation, basic maths facts etc.

The National Curriculum requires us to try and develop children’s mastery of a range of skills and knowledge appropriate to each year group . We talk about a child being at AGE RELATED EXPECTATIONS (ARE) – or at EXS ‘At the Expected Standard’  if they are reaching this required standard. 

Our curriculum ensures that we deliver the National Curriculum with rich, real life experiences and offer our children a broad and balanced curriculum. We look for ways for children to apply these basic 'ARE' skills across the curriculum.

 One of our key tools for doing this is our WPA Essentials.

Parents - Please support us by using your child’s WPA ESSENTIALS at home. We want to increase your child’s confidence, fluency and automaticity with these, as this will help them better cope with the rest of the curriculum. 

HOW DO THEY WORK?

School staff will ensure children know what their WPA Essentials are and understand them. Each classroom will have visuals, strategies and tools to help children to be independent in using and checking their WPA Essentials. We will be marking for and feeding back on the children's successful, automatic use of these. The Senior Leadership Team will also monitor teaching and learning against the WPA Essentials.

WRITING ESSENTIALS

WHAT IS A COMMON EXCEPTION WORD?

Common exception words are words where the usual spelling rule doesn't apply. As children come across unfamiliar spelling and sound patterns in tricky words, their phonics knowledge won't always help them to sound out and read the word; such as the common exception words "sugar", "improve", "climb" and "because".

Some of these exception words are used frequently, so children are introduced to common exception words in Year 1 and Year 2. However, as we follow Little Wandle Synthetic Phonics Programme for the teaching and learning of phonics, some of these words will be introduced to children in Reception.

Children have a list of these words which they are expected to learn to read and spell by the end of each year in primary school.