Educational Programme

It is crucial for children to develop a life-long love of reading. Reading consists of two dimensions: language comprehension and word reading. Language comprehension (necessary for both reading and writing) starts from birth. It only develops when adults talk with children about the world around them and the books (stories and non-fiction) they read with them, and enjoy rhymes, poems and songs together.

Skilled word reading, taught later, involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words. Writing involves transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech, before writing).

Developmental Milestones

Children in reception will be learning to:

• Read individual letters by saying the sounds for them.
• Blend sounds into words, so that they can read short words made up of known letter– sound correspondences.
• Read some letter groups that each represent one sound and say sounds for them.
• Read a few common exception words matched to the school’s phonic programme.
• Read simple phrases and sentences made up of words with known letter–sound correspondences and, where necessary, a few exception words.
• Re-read these books to build up their confidence in word reading, their fluency and their understanding and enjoyment.
• Form lower-case and capital letters correctly.
• Spell words by identifying the sounds and then writing the sound with letter/s.
• Write short sentences with words with known sound-letter correspondences using a capital letter and full stop.
• Re-read what they have written to check that it makes sense.