English and Communication underpins everything we teach at The Castle School with daily lessons taught to focus on specific aspects of Reading, Writing, Phonics and communication.

In addition to the daily learning that takes place in the classroom, we provide additional extra support to help individual pupils excel.  This will often be based on students’ individual Support and Achievement Plan (SAP) targets. 

From September 2023, we are excited to be moving towards using Twinkl Phonics, a Department for Education approved scheme, for our phonics lessons.  Alongside this we will be using Twinkl’s new reading scheme, Rhino Readers, a progressive set of books which are fully decodable and pitched at the level that the students are currently working on.  When our students progress from reading Rhino Readers, they then move on to Rapid Readers.  These are high interest books which offer challenge and progression for our more able readers.  To continue to support and develop reading skills further, we have built up a varied, age appropriate reading library full of books that the students enjoy reading.