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Intent
Intent
Foremost we want children to develop a love of reading, through sharing high quality books with adults. We want our children to understand that books help us to learn about the world, the past and to learn new words, and that fiction books can put them in imaginary worlds full of adventure and excitement.
Children leaving Reception should be able to confidently read the phonemes that have been taught, and blend them together to read decodable words, including words with consonant blends and polysyllabic words. Children should also recall the non-decodable words taught, by learning them by rote.
By the time children leave Reception we want them to confidently be able to segment words containing the GPCs that have been taught, and be able to write them using the correct formation of the letter shapes, holding the pencil with a tripod grip. Children should also be able to write simple phrases dictated by an adult, using spaces between words and remembering how to spell some of the non-decodable words that have been taught.
Some children who become confident at transcribing may begin to compose their own sentences and write them during child-led learning parts of the day.
Implementation
Implementation
Each Reception class has a reading area stocked with high quality fiction and non-fiction books. Books are also threaded throughout the environment, such as a non-fiction book about buildings and structures in the construction area. When learning about particular topics, books will be a central part of the learning and shared with children by an adult, who can pose questions to access further thinking and learning about the topic. We have books in baskets both inside and outside so children can bump into books, and we ask members of the community to come into school to read to small groups of children in our library, to allow the children opportunities to ask questions and explore language in small groups.
We use a synthetic phonics program, ‘song of sounds’ to teach children to learn to read and write. We match our home reading books closely with regular assessment of the sounds children have learnt.
Children take part in daily drawing club sessions which focus on quality texts though a variety of different media such as video clips, stories, poetry and oral tales. Children learn words and actions with an ambitious vocabulary linked to the drawing club story which are interwoven in daily learning, this vocabulary is revisited again many times to ensure new words have been remembered.
Usually two thirds of our children entering reception have yet to develop a tripod grip, in order to help children develop with their pen grip and ability to write we use a whole class gross motor program to help strengthen the arm and core muscles, and some children are identified as needing further support take part in a OT programme. Particular children are also identified for a fine motor skill intervention which focuses on developing the muscles in the wrists, hand arches and fingers. Our outdoor environment has been set up to include opportunities for developing physical strength in each area, and our inside learning environment supports the development of fine motor development in each area.
We begin teaching children how to write the GPCs that have been learnt through our phonics program, focusing heavily on the letter families and correct formation. This takes place as an adult led activity with careful monitoring of each individual child. Adults intervene rapidly when children are not forming the letters correctly to try and minimise the wrong formation being learnt. As the children progress we move to writing CVC words and then captions and phrases.
Impact
Impact
Children make rapid progress in reading, and close monitoring of their progress allows us to intervene quickly if children are not progressing as they should. In writing children move steadily through our planned curriculum, and timely interventions support children to develop their motor skills.
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