Literacy

In Nursery the children are introduced to a variety of songs, rhymes, and stories 1:1, in small groups and in whole class sessions. Many topics and themes are based around songs and stories to help the children grow an enthusiasm for joining in with stories and looking at text in their environment.

Early writing skills are developed through a sensory approach at an early stage. The children are introduced to a wide range of materials, tools, and activities to help develop their gross and fine motor skills to enable them to begin to use tools effectively. The children learn to give meaning to the marks they make and begin to represent words with marks they make using pencils, chalk, paint, and messy play both inside and outside. The children learn to recognise their names in a variety of ways and begin to recognise the letters in their names.

We begin to introduce an awareness of sounds in the environment to build the children’s phonological awareness. In Reception we aim to encourage children to become confident and independent writers as well as developing a love for writing for a range of different purposes. We continue to use a range of tools to develop writing skills in a range of different ways. Through phonics, we teach the children to read and write the initial sounds and then teach them how to blend and segment so that they can begin the next stage of reading and writing.

We ensure that the environment is rich in a variety of text for the children to read and develop their skills. We follow a writing progression which takes the children from mark making in Nursery to independently writing short sentences by the end of the Reception year.