Literacy
At the heart of the curriculum is the development of children’s skills in speaking and listening, reading and writing.
Speaking and listening is developed throughout the school day as children are given opportunities to discuss with both children and adults, follow and give instructions and express their thoughts and views.
Reading is taught through daily literacy lessons, which teach reading skills, and through opportunities across the curriculum to use their reading skills. There is a strong encouragement to read books at home and school regularly.
Opportunities for reading in school include:
- Guided Reading (a weekly reading session in a group of 4-7 children)
- Shared Reading (reading a text together as a class several times during a week)
- Parent Reading (volunteer parents hear children read on Monday afternoons – a crèche is available for parents who want to help but have children under school age)
- Partner Reading (older children work with younger children to practice their reading once a week)
- Practice Reading (teachers, learning assistants and parent volunteers work in a class hearing children read)
The school has developed a reading scheme which draws on the best of a structured (published) reading scheme and opportunities to experience interesting books at each stage of reading development.
Our reading resources are divided into 22 progressive stages.
Each stage has:
- Core Readers - packs of reading books from the Heinemann Reading Scheme for use by Guided Reading groups.
- Book Packs - books by a wide range of authors compatible in reading level to the Core Readers. These are also used by Guided Reading groups.
- Book Boxes - children are given the opportunity, at least twice weekly, to choose individual books that are broadly compatible with the Core Readers at the stage.
- Library – there is a school library stocked with, mostly, non-fiction books. These are used for topic research and children are allowed to take home a library book each week.
- All children have a Reading Record Book where teachers enter comments and advice on reading progress. Please use the book to comment when your child is heard to read at home. A dialogue on reading development helps to develop children’s reading skills.
- Teaching Phonic skills (letter sounds)
Jolly Phonics is our approach to learning early letter sounds in Nursery, Reception and Key Stage 1 classes. Support at home to help children match letters to sounds is a very important early stage of reading and writing development. - Writing: Children’s writing is developed by providing experience of different types of writing; stories, reports, poems and so on. Modelling the features of the type of writing by the teacher, providing practice in specific writing skills and then giving children the opportunity to write for an audience and purpose are the key parts to teaching writing.
- Handwriting: The teaching of handwriting is based on the “Cripps” approach called “A Hand for Spelling. This links the development of handwriting with letter combinations common in spelling patterns. A copy of the actual letter shapes used is given to parents when children start in Reception or is available in school. Children have two short handwriting lessons each week to practice their letter formation skills.
- Spelling: Spelling is taught within the literacy hour largely through the recognition of spelling patterns and practice of words identified for each year group in the National Literacy Strategy.
- Several approaches are used to help children learn spelling patterns in school. When words are sent home to practice the most successful method of learning to spell a word is –
- Look - Say - Cover - Write - Check
• Look at a word for 7 seconds, concentrate on any patterns of small words within the
word which may help recall
• Say the word
• Cover the word and wait 13 seconds before trying to spell it
• Write the word
• Check if it is correct
Where a word is wrong look at the error, talk about it and have another go.