English
Communication and Language
Our over-arching intention is to provide our children with a solid foundation of literacy skills that will underpin all their future, life-long learning. At the end of KS1 most of our children have progressed from mark-making to a cursive script; from learning to read, to reading to learn; and have a tool-kit of writing know-how and a rich store-house of learned stories and poems to draw on in their own creative writing.
During Term 1 all our Reception children are assessed via Speech and Language Link, so that specific speech and language needs are highlighted at the onset and children offered appropriate provision, both in class and with our school-based speech and language practitioner, specific to their individual needs.
Speaking and Listening
Speaking and listening skills are vital in our infant school and teachers know that talk has to be prioritised and developed across all curriculum areas. We use a range of teaching strategies to get children talking, for example: daily use of ‘talk partners’ and group work, Talk-for-Write techniques which allow teachers to model progressively challenging sentence structures and vocabulary; role-play and drama - including techniques like, conscience alley, Edward de Bono’s thinking hats, hot-seating. Our aim is to create an inspiring, active-learning style, where children can explore and investigate ideas for themselves.
To ensure our children receive a daily diet of high-quality texts, each Year group has a different, carefully-curated collection of Core Books (stories, non-fiction and poetry) to use during daily story-times. Re-reading these ‘Core Books’ means children have a chance to develop ‘favourites’ and experience the sheer joy of books.
Phonics
Helps children to “crack the code” of reading. At Priory Infant School, we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. So it is essential that our approach to teaching phonics and reading is accessible to all learners, regardless of background. This is why we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.
Also see our webpage on Phonics
Reading
Teaching children how to read is at the heart of all we do at Priory Infant School. We teach early reading and phonics skills systematically, at the same time as creating a love of reading and nurturing the enjoyment of text and books by sharing high-quality reading experiences. We use systematic synthetic phonics teaching – Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised - as a powerful tool to teach young children to read and spell. We teach children to read through reading practice sessions three times a week. These sessions are taught by a fully trained adult to small groups of approximately six children. We use books matched to the children’s secure phonic knowledge using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments. They are monitored by the class teacher, who rotates and works with each group on a regular basis. Each reading practice session has a clear focus, so that the demands of the session do not overload the children’s working memory. The reading practice sessions have been designed to focus on three key reading skills:
- Decoding; learning to recognise and say sounds represented by a symbol
- Prosody: teaching children to read with understanding and expression;
- Comprehension: teaching children to understand the text.
In Reception these sessions start in Week 4. Children who are not yet decoding have daily additional blending practice in small groups, so that they quickly learn to blend and can begin to read books. In Year 2 we continue to teach reading in this way for any children who still need to practise reading with decodable books.
Home reading
A decodable reading practice book is taken home to ensure success is shared with the family. Decodable ebooks are also available online to all our families. Each child chooses a reading for pleasure books to go home for parents to share and read to children. We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised parents’ resources to engage our families and share information about phonics, the benefits of sharing books, how children learn to blend and other aspects of our provision, both online and through workshops.
Additional reading support for vulnerable children
Children in Reception and Year 1 who are receiving additional phonics Keep-up sessions read their reading practice book to an adult daily.
Writing
We engage our young writers with a topic-led curriculum that has the flexibility to be child-led and cross-curricular. Naturally our writing is also inspired by our Core Books and our reading curriculum. So high-quality children’s authors like Eric Carle, Julia Donaldson, Michael Rosen and Anthony Browne inspire our children’s writing. We use high-quality texts from the CLPE Power of Reading to inform our reading and writing curriculum, using drama and role-play to excite and engage our children. We know that young children are more motivated to write when they are given a purpose or reason. So our teachers work hard to bring learning to life by inspiring young imaginations with ‘wow starters’. For example, our Year 2s are visited by a ‘dragon’, who leaves her footprints and eggs all around the playground. What will happen next? Our Year 1 children receive mysterious rhyming riddles from a special character. When they put them all together they discover a strange creature, called a Gruffalo. Our Reception children are ‘transported’ to Anna Hibiscus’s house in Africa through African singing and dancing.
We further strive to enrich our writing curriculum with trips, visitors and special themed events, such as No-Pen Week, when all our writing implements were stolen and we had to find other ways to mark-make. When our pens and pencils are returned four days later we are desperate to write again!
A close link with our local children’s book shop, Moon Lane, has enabled us to invite best-selling children’s authors, such as Tamara Macfarlane and Emer Stamp to visit and inspire childrens’ reading and writing.
Pie Corbett’s Talk for Write techniques have proven results. Children learn stories by heart, then recycle or innovate them to write a story of their own. This scaffolds their extended writing and gives them a store-house of quality stories to draw on in their creative writing.
Our KS1 children are encouraged to edit and reflect on their writing by using their Purple Polishing Pens to improve their work.
Handwriting
Before children are asked to write, it is important that they are developmentally ready to do so. In YR the development of fine motor skills are prioritised with daily adult-led activities, such as dough disco and then throughout the school day in our continuous provision and child-initiated learning. Following guidance from the National Handwriting Association, our YR children are encouraged to develop a dynamic tripod grip, which provides stability while allowing the precise movements needed to form letters. YR children are taught printed letter shapes using the letter formation from Little Wandle Revised Letters and Sounds.
In KS1 we aim to teach a continuous cursive style of handwriting, where the children learn to shape letters in a form that is then easy for them to join together as soon as they can. This ‘flowing’ script helps children to learn to write in a way that is legible, fluent and fast.
Skills and Progression Maps
Reading
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Writing
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Year R English
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Year 1 English
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Year 2 English
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