ENGLISH INTENT

At Bracebridge Infant and Nursery School we understand that literacy is a foundation to accessing learning in all other areas of the curriculum and literacy learning is encouraged, developed and supported here with great importance and focus at every opportunity. It is a core subject of the National Curriculum and a prerequisite for educational and social progress. English skills such as Reading, Writing and Speaking and Listening help to underpin other areas of the curriculum. With a range of languages, diverse cultures and individualities here at Bracebridge, the acquisition of language skills is of the utmost importance and therefore the teaching of all aspects of English is given high priority within school. We aim to ensure that every child becomes a reader, a writer and a confident speaker by the time they leave our school.

Literacy has three main aspects: speaking and listening, Reading and Phonics and Writing.  Each of these aspects supports the others so all are taught with equal importance.  We strongly believe that high quality phonics teaching and learning and high quality speaking and listening experiences build the strongest foundations for good reading and writing development.

READING AND PHONICS INTENT

Here at Bracebridge Infant and Nursery School, we strive to promote and instil a love of reading from an early age. We know the paramount importance  that daily reading and exposure to rich vocabulary and texts has on children's academic success and lifelong learning. Through our curriculum, we strive to teach children to become confident, fluent and able readers- ones who want to share their love of books and language whether in English or their native language- written or spoken.  It is our intent that through daily exposure to a wide variety of high quality, cross-curricular texts within class, and in addition to each classes Favourite Five books termly,  that children are provided with the opportunity to engage with these texts and give real purpose for reading in order to embed and practise their reading skills, drawing them further into the world of books and enhancing their love of reading.  

READING AND PHONICS IMPLEMENTATION

We use a synthetic phonics programme called Read, Write INC (RWI)  produced by Ruth Miskin. Read, Write Inc is a method of learning letter sounds and blending them together to read and write words. As part of this, all children from Reception to Year 2 are put into small ability group and taught daily by an adult who has had full RWI training. The children participate in speaking, listening and spelling activities that are matched to their developing needs, working through the different stages, learning and developing their phonics sounds and knowledge. The adults draw upon observations and continuous assessment to ensure children are stretched and challenged and to identify any children who may require additional support.

Any child, who for whatever reason, is not making the expected progress, and our lowest 20% receive daily intervention in order to allow them to make progress, and leave the school a fluent reader.  Once children have completed the RWI programme, they enter our language and literacy group, which teaches genres, speaking & listening, reading and writing through a high-quality text as well as the importance of comprehension. Alongside RWI, a genre per term is taught to the children and an independent written piece is produced in Key Stage 1.

Language and Literacy  concepts to be covered:

Nouns (all forms), Pronouns, Adjectives, expanded noun phrase, verb – doing word, verb – being word, adverbs, Simile, Dr Sense, Preposition (Position), Simple Sentence, Antonym, Synonym, Openers which relate to Y2, Co-ordinating Conjunction, Compound sentence, Main clause, Subordinating Conjunction, Complex sentence, subordinate clause.

Reading for Pleasure

Reading is not only celebrated in classrooms but around school. You will find many opportunities for pupils to engage in reading opportunities within the classroom environment through our interactive reading corners, tents, little libraries outside and phonics areas around the school.  High quality texts are read to the children daily in our dedicated reading time, with our ‘favourite 5’ books being repeated often so that children can retell their favourite stories independently, and develop their knowledge of story structures. Author visits, and special events such as World Book Day all work to further develop children’s love of the written word. 

Reading at home is encouraged and children across school read regularly with teachers and teaching assistants. Each week, children in Nursery are invited to take home a reading for pleasure book to share with their families.  Reception and Key Stage 1 children working on the RWI programme also have home reading books matched to their current phonics level  or 'free reader books'  that they are reading as part of their Language and Literacy group teaching. We expect families at home to read these books with their child daily and make comments in their child's reading record

Language Acquisition & Vocabulary Development

We recognise the importance of developing a plethora of vocabulary. We endeavour to ensure we provide our pupils with a 'language rich' environment. Within our classrooms, we explore ambitious vocabulary across the wider curriculum to ensure we acquire an understanding of tricky language through the use of our WOW word walls. 

Speaking and listening

At Bracebridge Infant and Nursery School you will see speaking and listening taking place in every classroom during all lessons as we believe that high quality speaking and listening teaching will lead to high quality learning in all areas of the curriculum.    Many of our lessons across the curriculum require the children to work collaboratively, either in pairs or small groups, which encourages key skills such as listening and responding appropriately and negotiating.  Our literacy topics will usually begin with an emphasis on speaking and listening.  During literacy lessons we use techniques such as drama, freeze framing and hot seating to encourage the children to explore the text they are sharing as a class more thoroughly before they carry out any writing activities.  This allows the children to have developed their ideas about the text before they are asked to write, promoting more thoughtful and interesting written pieces of work.

READING AND PHONICS  IMPACT

Through the teaching of synthetic phonics, our aim is for children to become fluent and confident readers by the time they leave our school at the end of Year 2.

Children’s reading ability is assessed half termly through a RWI assessment.  Children are then promptly moved into the correct group for them in order to continue progress.  Children not making the expected level of progress according to our RWI progress grids receive immediate daily intervention.  Any child who is recurring on the intervention list are assessed further with the school SENCO and appropriate support/agencies put into place.

Moderation takes place within school and with cluster schools, as well as through official moderations to ensure correct assessments are made.

Furthermore, in EYFS we ensure that continuous provision provides opportunities for all aspects of communication, language and literacy in addition to daily phonics. Daily reading opportunities, areas, reading tents, use of Favourite Five texts and experiences are in place throughout EYFS. Observations and recordings of children's reading achievements are done so by individuals on Tapestry and subsequently examples of learning are displayed and celebrated throughout the environment and used to effectively assess against the Early Learning Goal.

A love and desire for reading is the foundation to all learning. The importance and impact of our reading curriculum is far-reaching and goes beyond the constraints of the statutory Early Years, Year 1 Phonics and Year 2 Reading assessments.

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