English

The whole world opened to me when I learned to read.

Intent

At Lenthall Infant and Nursery School, we aim to give our pupils a high-quality English curriculum that will give them a foundation to speak, read and write fluently. We are committed to ensuring our children become enthusiastic and confident readers who read widely and often, for both pleasure and information. We are committed to raising phonics screening outcomes in year 1. We want our children to be successful readers by the time they leave our school and research shows that when phonics is taught in a consistent, systematic way it is the most effective way of teaching young children to read. We believe that confident speakers become confident writers and therefore place a big emphasis on developing oracy skills not just within English but across the curriculum. 

Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange.

Implementation

Phonics

Our School has chosen Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised as our systematic, synthetic phonics (SSP) programme to teach early reading and spelling.  The children progress through the Little Wandle Programme until they can read fluently. Please see the document below for the programme overview and progression. 

Programme Overview - Reception and Year 1

For more information on our chosen systematic, synthetic phonics (SSP) programme, please...

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Reading

High priority is given to reading throughout the school. Children take part in reading practise sessions at least three times a week, daily story time, and where necessary one-to-one reading. We aim to develop a love of reading with every child, with the hope that they each become lifelong readers. 

At Lenthall Infant and Nursery School, we use the Big Cat Collins Letters and Sound Revised reading scheme. This reading scheme is fully phonically decodable and links directly with the phonics programme we follow. Children only read a text which contains the phonemes and tricky words they have been taught and assessment is used to match each child to the correct book. 

All classrooms have inviting and exciting reading areas with subject-specific books and other age-appropriate ‘reading-for-pleasure' books. Pupils are encouraged to use this area in which to choose, read and interact with books in an enjoyable way. All children have access to the school library each week and take home a 'love-to-read' book each week to enjoy with someone at home. 

All of our curriculum themes are book based and begin with an exciting text. Please see below the reading spine for each year group. 

Lenthall Infant and Nursery School Reading Spine

 I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. – Robert Louis Stevenson

Writing

At Lenthall Infant and Nursery School, we believe that 'Talk for Writing' is the best approach for our children. The aim of Talk for Writing is to develop imaginative, creative, and effective writers. Our writing curriculum begins with a 'hook' usually focused around each half-termly overarching curriculum theme, centered around real-life experiences and writing for enjoyment. We then follow 3 steps through the Talk for Writing process which are as follows:

Imitate: A text is introduced and read to the children; together the class learns to tell the story. To help the children remember the text a multi-sensory approach is used which includes: a visual story map, actions, and a focus on lively, animated expression.  As children learn the stories word for word, they develop the use of specific sentence structures, which they can then use in their own writing. The principle is that if a child can tell a story, they will be able to write a story.

Innovate: Once our pupils are familiar with the model text, the teacher then leads them into creating their own versions. This is based on changing the basic story map, retelling the new version, and completing boxed-up planners. Shared, modelled, and guided writing is used to stage writing opportunities, so that the children can then concentrate on bringing all of the elements together, writing effectively and accurately.

 Invent: The final stage is the invention stage where the children use all of the skills they have learned over the writing process to write an independent piece. There is the freedom to draw upon their own ideas and experiences, or they can ‘hug closely’ to the shared text should they need to.

Reading and writing float on a sea of talk.