My Literacy

Literacy, Reading and Phonics

We have a carefully considered and sequenced approach to early reading, which enables children working at an early development level to build essential pre-reading knowledge, understanding and skills. These include early visual, auditory and motor skills; focus and attention skills; early communication skills; and memory and sequencing skills. Foundations for reading are established through a clear focus on developing language comprehension and word recognition skills. This includes a focus on developing vocabulary, language conventions and background knowledge alongside phonological awareness, which we achieve through sharing high-quality stories and poems; the Little Wandle Foundation for Phonics programme; learning a range of rhymes and simple poems; and activities that develop focused listening and attention, including oral blending.

Learners who have established these pre-reading and foundations for reading skills are supported to become effective early readers. There is a continued focus on developing language comprehension skills alongside more formal decoding and automatic word recognition skills. We use the ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds' systematic synthetic phonics programme to ensure children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school. Alongside our phonics programme, we use carefully matched ‘Big Cat’ decodable reading books in order for children to apply their phonics knowledge and be able to access high quality texts and read for pleasure later on.

Each learner's reading progress is tracked through their personal learning journeys in Evidence for Learning and their phonic knowledge progress is tracked through regular formative assessment and shown on the Little Wandle Assessment Tracker.

Pupils access books in their classrooms, in the school library and the local libraries. Some of our younger readers access early rhyme and reading groups in the community and our older readers visit Littlemore library and borrow books regularly. Every class has a daily story time and, as a minimum, pupils accessing phase two phonics and upwards also have three small group or one to one reads weekly. Pupils at Mabel Prichard are given the opportunity to explore texts which reflect the diversity of the school community, allowing our young people to see themselves represented, included and valued. They experience sensory stories, multisensory rhyming activities and different genres of text. Pupils of all ages are exposed to high quality picture books and experience narrative sessions, drama and comprehension activities. Our Big Cat E-book library is accessed by parents and carers at home and pupils also are given the opportunity to take self-chosen “book talk” books home to share.

• Little Wandle Phonics policy and progression documents

• Communication framework

• Writing framework

• My World framework

• PSHE framework

• Careers framework

• Personal Development opportunities

• Library visits

• Local author visits

• Little Wandle scheme of work including three weekly reads

• Links to Dr Sarah Mosely works and the Teach Us Too Charity

Writing

It is recognised that, due to physical barriers or neurodiversity, some pupils will not write in the conventional way, so our writing curriculum aims to support all learners to develop ‘writing’ skills that will enhance their growing independence. Learners are provided with a range of alternative means of ‘writing’ such as symbol-support, technology and mark making implements. Writing at MPS is seen as an activity that supports and incorporates communication, records events and experiences that are important to learners and widening their world of literature.