Adventurers - Early Reading, Phonics and Writing
Teaching Early reading and phonics
Communication, language and interaction is the key focus when considering our approach to early reading and phonics. We aim to provide a communication friendly environment where both verbal and non-verbal methods of communication are implemented.
As a school we follow the Read, Write, Inc programme for phonics which highlights the importance of developing an early love of books, rhymes and songs. Our children will be exposed to a variety of texts and will experience stories and singing daily.
Through continuous assessment we will be able to judge when each individual will begin learning some of the set 1 sounds.
Nursery rhymes and storytimes
The main focus in our classrooms will be reading stories and rhymes to children and developing their early language skills.
We will plan the nursery rhymes and stories which we will sing and read over and over again – using the same actions, including Makaton, and special emphasis every time.
We will use the RWI ‘ten top tips for reading stories’ and share these with parents.
Planning talk/communication throughout the day
When appropriate for our children, we will organise small group sessions throughout the day to ensure children talk/communicate as much as possible. We will carefully plan the words and talk/communication associated with the play - this helps to make the most of the adults’ time when working alongside children. We plan to use a range of words and phrases.
Our planned talk sessions will link to ‘The Write Stuff’ which is the scheme we follow for the teaching of writing.
Teaching Read Write Inc phonics
Through our continuous assessment of the children we will identify the appropriate developmental time to deliver the RWI Set 1 phonics using the following approaches:
Before starting to teach Set 1 sounds:
- Practise using ‘pure sounds’.
- Use Fred Talk to teach oral
- Teach children to name the
Start teaching sounds:
- Teach a new sound every
- Choose a time of the day when children are at their most
- Start teaching children to blend in small groups once the children can read all the single letter Set 1 sounds
Letter formation:
- Teach children to form the letters in the air during the Speeds Sounds
- If the children are ready, teach them the correct pencil grip and sitting position from the very beginning.
- Help children practise writing letters at a different time of the day in small groups, or as required
Teaching Writing
Our aim across the Early Years is to make meaningful writers. Our adults and environment need to model and support the development of effective language. Before our children can become confident writers, it is our job to support their vocabulary development and build a thesaurus for the children through word collecting and phrase collecting.
We need to support the metacognition of our leaners. We need to help our children in getting to understand what they are thinking. It is our job to give the children the experiences that they need to enable them to understand a range of concepts and ideas in order to be able to talk about them and eventually to write about them.
‘Make it real, make it relevant.’
We will teach our writing using ‘The Write Stuff’ programme for EYFS. Through this we will be able to effectively provide experiences and opportunities for our learners to build on their spoken language, non-verbal communication, their understanding of language and their ability to record.
We know and understand that our learners need to build on their fine and gross motor skills before being able to write and form letters. We will teach and nurture our children building on these motor skills and provide them with opportunities to mark make using a range of resources. Through our teaching of ‘The Write Stuff’ we will build on children’s writing skills, understanding and valuing the early stages of emergent writing towards the individual’s writing progress.
All writing that the children produce will be celebrated and valued, especially in the early stages of mark making and emergent writing. It is our job to promote, encourage and recognise that the children have recorded something meaningful to them.
THE FANTASTICS
We aim to embed the children’s communication, understanding and development of language and early writing skills through all activities across the curriculum which will be supported by the use of the FANTASTICS. The symbols will be embedded in all activities, lessons and play opportunities to ensure that staff are providing the rich, effective modelling of language that our children need.
