To ensure effective planning of literacy teachers need to ensure they plan for all elements of literacy effectively across the year ensuring that assessment for learning is used to plan and amend teaching. It is essential that core skills such as phonic strategies, spelling, and handwriting are incorporated into these exemplar units to ensure effective learning. 

Most children learn to:
(The following list comprises only the strands, numbered 1 through 12, that are relevant to this particular unit.)

1. Speaking

• Interpret a text by reading aloud with some variety in pace and emphasis

2. Listening and responding

• Listen with sustained concentration, building new stores of words in different contexts

3. Group discussion and interaction

• Ask and answer questions, make relevant contributions, offer suggestions and take turns
• Explain their views to others in a small group, decide how to report the group's views to the class

5. Word recognition: decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling)

• Recognise and use alternative ways of pronouncing the graphemes already taught
• Recognise and use alternative ways of spelling the graphemes already taught
• Identify the constituent parts of two-syllable and three-syllable words to support the application of phonic knowledge and skills
• Recognise automatically an increasing number of familiar high frequency words
• Apply phonic knowledge and skills as the prime approach to reading and spelling unfamiliar words that are not completely decodable
• Read more challenging texts which can be decoded using their acquired phonic knowledge and skills, along with automatic recognition of high frequency words
• Read and spell phonically decodable two-syllable and three-syllable words

6. Word structure and spelling

• Spell new words using phonics as the prime approach
• Segment sounds into their constituent phonemes in order to spell them correctly
• Recognise and use alternative ways of spelling the graphemes already taught
• Use knowledge of common inflections in spelling, such as plurals, -ly, -er
• Read and spell phonically decodable two-syllable and three-syllable words

7. Understanding and interpreting texts

• Explain the effect of patterns of language and repeated words and phrases

8. Engaging with and responding to texts

• Visualise and comment on events, characters and ideas, making imaginative links to their own experiences

9. Creating and shaping texts

• Find and use new and interesting words and phrases, including story language
• Create short simple texts on paper and on screen that combine words with images (and sounds)

12. Presentation

• Write most letters, correctly formed and orientated, using a comfortable and efficient pencil grip
• Write with spaces between words accurately
• Use the space bar and keyboard to type their name and simple texts