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

• Explain ideas and processes using imaginative and adventurous vocabulary and non-verbal gestures to support communication

2. Listening and responding

• Listen to others in class, ask relevant questions and follow instructions
• Listen to talk by an adult, remember some specific points and identify what they have learned

3. Group discussion and interaction

• Ensure that everyone contributes, allocate tasks, and consider alternatives and reach agreement

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

• Read independently and with increasing fluency longer and less familiar texts
• Spell with increasing accuracy and confidence, drawing on word recognition and knowledge of word structure, and spelling patterns
• Know how to tackle unfamiliar words that are not completely decodable
• Read and spell less common alternative graphemes including trigraphs
• Read high and medium frequency words independently and automatically

6. Word structure and spelling

• Spell with increasing accuracy and confidence, drawing on word recognition and knowledge of word structure, and spelling patterns including common inflections and use of double letters
• Read and spell less common alternative graphemes including trigraphs

7. Understanding and interpreting texts

• Give some reasons why things happen or characters change
• Explain organisational features of texts, including alphabetical order, layout, diagrams, captions, hyperlinks and bullet points

8. Engaging with and responding to texts

• Engage with books though exploring and enacting interpretations

9. Creating and shaping texts

• Draw on knowledge and experience of texts in deciding and planning what and how to write
• Select from different presentational features to suit particular writing purposes on paper and on screen

10. Text structure and organisation

• Use planning to establish clear sections for writing  (This link will take you to the relevant Steps in learning for this objective. Use the 'back' button on your browser to return to the objectives.)
• Use appropriate language to make sections hang together

11. Sentence structure and punctuation

• Write simple and compound sentences and begin to use subordination in relation to time and reason  (This link will take you to the relevant Steps in learning for this objective. Use the 'back' button on your browser to return to the objectives.)