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Speaking and Listening:
The spoken word is a child’s first opportunity to share their capability with others. As such, we aim to model and develop ambitious and interesting vocabulary on which children can base their communication. We have high standards for listening, which we take time to develop in ensuring children get as much as they can from any situation.
Phonics –Phonics is taught daily in Reception Class, Year 1 and Year 2. We use a programme called Letters and Sounds and each session lasts approximately 20 minutes. The children are taught using a teaching sequence as shown below: Revisit and Review Previous learning of graphemes and phonemes are revisited. Practise of oral blending and segmenting. Teach Teach a new grapheme. Teach blending and/or segmenting of phonemes in words. Practise Practise reading and/or spelling of the new grapheme/phoneme. Apply Read or write a caption/sentence using the new grapheme/phoneme and some high frequency words. Segmenting and blending Segmenting consists of breaking words down into separate phonemes e.g m-o-p. This aids children in their spelling. Blending consists of building words from the separate phonemes, this aids children when reading unknown words. Phonemes and graphemes A phoneme is the sound of each letter. A grapheme is the written letter.The children in our school show a great enthusiasm for reading and we want children to develop positive lifelong reading habits. Reading is taught through a structured approach using the “Oxford Reading Tree” Scheme. This scheme is supplemented with a wide assortment of attractive books of different formats and levels of difficulty. We can use both classroom based reading material and our well stocked children’s library to introduce our children to the widest possible selection of books. We believe that children become confident and fluent readers when both school and home support them. We encourage parents to hear their children read a little every evening and record comments in a reading record. As the children progress through the school, they are introduced to literature of increasing complexity. They also learn to analyse and evaluate a wide range of texts.
Our children are encouraged to write in different styles and for differing occasions. Within all genres of writing we stress the importance of spelling, punctuation, grammar and presentation. The correct formation of letters and the development of a cursive style of writing begins at a very early stage in the Reception class, and is taught progressively throughout the school. Our aim is to have the children writing in a joined cursive style by the time they commence in the Juniors (Year 3).