Reading and writing are fundamental skills that are vital for all children to learn and achieve across the curriculum. Much of our time as an infant school is spent teaching and honing those basic skills. Through the ‘Read, Write Inc’ phonics program, children are taught to decode and blend, before focusing on fluency, intonation and comprehension. Wider reading and comprehension are further supported by dedicated reading sessions in class, where teaching is taught using high quality fiction and non-fiction texts.

We recognise the importance of encouraging reading for pleasure, developing children’s speaking and listening skills and the power of being able to orally tell stories. We use ‘Talk for Writing’ to help children understand the structure of stories. This incorporates active story telling actions, story maps and oral rehearsal prior to writing; this ensures that our learners are confident when they write.

High expectations for transcription, presentation and grammar are interleaved across the entire curriculum. Vocabulary is also specifically taught across the curriculum because we want our learners to have a rich bank of words to use when they are creating descriptive writing and to use during oracy activities and discussions.