What is the Reading curriculum?

The most fundamental goal of the National Curriculum for English is for children to learn to communicate and engage with the world around them confidently and effectively. Our ambition is that pupils will learn to do so meaningfully and with purpose through the high quality structures and strong ambition in the CUSP English provision.

CUSP Reading has been purposefully built around the principles of evidence-led practice. The curriculum is built on three key foundations: explicit vocabulary instruction; explicit fluency instruction (prosodic reading) and opportunities to think hard. Every unit follows a clear and progressive sequence that immerses pupils meaningfully in rich and demanding texts that have been carefully curated.

Pupils have the opportunity throughout the Primary journey to experience a wide range of literature, as well as studying extended texts in full. This ensures both breadth and depth in their reading diet. Strong lesson routines ensure consistent practice across the school and incremental progression in the demands of both the texts that pupils study and how they are asked to respond to these. CUSP Reading utilises all that we know about effective reading instruction and provides teachers with the framework to ensure a diet of excellence for all pupils.

What is the Writing curriculum?

The most fundamental goal of the National Curriculum for English is for children to learn to communicate and engage with the world around them confidently and effectively. Our ambition is that pupils will learn to do so meaningfully and with purpose through the high quality structures and strong ambition in the CUSP English provision.

The aim of CUSP Writing is to provide teachers with the tools to explicitly teach pupils the knowledge and competencies that they need about the different facets of writing and the writing process. The subject knowledge required in order to deliver the Primary curriculum for Writing is vast. By supporting teachers with the sequencing of this knowledge, we hope that it will create time and space for them to invest in developing their own subject knowledge and considering how to ensure that every lesson serves every pupil.

CUSP Writing synthesises the multiple aspects of knowledge and competency needed to write effectively and sequences these, using all that we know about cognitive science to ensure that pupils embed learning into the long-term memory.