Literacy

We place a big emphasis on developing basic skills early and on ensuring children have well developed literacy skills; reading, writing, speaking and listening.

We follow the synthetic phonics approach, using the Letters and Sounds programme.  It’s an approach to teaching phonics in which individual letters or letter sounds are blended to form groups of letters or sounds, and those groups are then blended to form complete words.  Letters and Sounds is divided into six phases, with each phase building on the skills and knowledge of previous learning. There are no big leaps in learning. Children have time to practice and rapidly expand their ability to read and spell words.

Our daily phonics sessions in Reception and Key Stage 1 are fun, involving lots of speaking, listening and games. The emphasis is on children’s active participation. They learn to use their phonic knowledge for reading and writing activities and in their independent work.

They are also taught to read and spell ‘tricky words’ – words with spellings that are unusual or that children have not yet been taught. These include the words ‘to’, ‘was’, ‘said’ and ‘the’ – you can’t really break the sounds down for such words so it’s better to just ‘recognise’ them. 

Phase one will have begun in nursery. This phase paves the way for the systematic learning of phonics. During this phase especially, we plan activities that will help children to listen attentively to sounds around them, such as the sounds of their toys and to sounds in spoken language. We teach a wide range of nursery rhymes and songs and read good books to and with the children. This helps to increase the number of words they know – their vocabulary – and helps them talk confidently about books. The children learn to identify rhyme and alliteration.

 We use a combination of reading schemes which include a variety of fiction and non–fiction books to develop children’s reading range. Children learn to read at different rates.  Once they become able, we encourage them to become ‘free readers’ and choose their own books.

We teach reading through whole class sessions developing vocabulary knowledge, comprehension skills and higher order skills of inference and deduction. Regular reading practise is encouraged at home.

Children are provided with regular opportunities to develop the essential skills of speaking and listening. This is done through discussion, drama and specific listening activities in pairs, groups and as a class. Good oral work enhances pupils’ understanding of language in both oral and written forms. This aspect of literacy is developed at all opportunities; in class, in the dinner queue, taking a message.

From Foundation Stage, children are taught letter formation and joins following our cursive handwriting scheme, which enables children to develop an independent, mature style of writing. Good presentation is expected at all times and displaying children’s work is an integral part of this process. Ultimately we want each child to develop a fluent, legible and attractive style of handwriting.

Opportunities to write start in nursery where emergent writing is developed. As children move through the school they are taught the structures of writing genres and how to develop their writing through use of vocabulary, punctuation and organisation. We use a programme called Power of Reading to develop writing skills across the school. This uses high quality texts which engage and enthuse the children.

Grammar and Punctuation sessions are introduced from Y2 upwards and are daily. We follow the No Nonsense Spelling scheme.