Phonics

We teach phonics as the first step for children learning to read and this begins in our preschool with being able to discriminate with a range of sounds, environmental, instrumental, body percussion. 

These skills are developed as a platform to letter sounds and are essential to support letter sound discrimination. 

Reading

• Please send your child’s reading book to school every day along with their Reading Record book..
• For every 5 days of reading, the children will receive a sticker. 
• Please try to listen to your child read as often as possible – ideally every day.
• Read to them too.
• We aim to hear the children read their individual book every week.

• The children read their book through twice before changing it.  This helps to support their understanding of the text and improves fluency when reading.

Spelling

The children will be learning phonic sounds for reading and spelling and also specific words and spellings patterns.

• We use Spelling Shed to learn spelling patterns and key words – send spellings home to practise. 
• Your child will be given a Spelling Shed login so that they can practise the spelling patterns at home.
• There is no formal spelling tests.
• We practise and revisit the spellings and spelling patterns frequently to help the children retain the words in their long term memory.
• Common exception words and high frequency words can be found in the centre pages of your child's reading record.

Writing

At school we use ‘Talk for Writing’ as our approach to writing which focuses on children accessing quality texts and learning stories and non-fiction orally so that when they come to write, many of the structural elements of writing become second nature.

However, it is widely recognised that writing is affected significantly by the books that a child enjoys, through being read to and as they begin to read themselves.  So, every book that you share at home, supports their writing as well as their reading.

Mathematics

We split the teaching of maths so that the two year groups are taught at the right level.  We use Herts for Learning maths across the school and use the CPA approach, Concrete (where manipulatives and objects are used), Pictorial (where concept images are used) and finally Abstract, where the concept images have been internalised and children are able to carry out lots of mathematical work mentally.