Literacy

Literacy is made up of 2 key areas: writing and reading (reading includes comprehension of books and word reading).

Our writing curriculum is where we learn about the mechanics of writing, including the formation of letters and the structure of simple captions and sentences.  This begins with exploring early mark-making within our nursery curriculum through to writing sentences within reception. Our curriculum also includes exploring purposes to write -such as shopping lists, labels and cards - and is developed through responding to our key texts which are all high quality texts taken from the EYFS section of the 100 Books of TPS.

Word reading is all about how we can actually decode words; this starts with us listening for different sounds and exploring the sounds we make in nursery, through to us learning Phase 2 and 3 phonics sounds in reception, and how we can blend these sounds together to read words including phase 4 words and those that are polysyllabic alongside simple sentences. 

Comprehension is where we deepen our understanding of stories, non-fiction books, rhymes and poetry. This is done across all our areas of our environment to ensure we develop a true love of reading for all of our children.

Writing

Developing a Love of Reading

In Early Years, it is crucial that we develop a love of reading and books. This ensures our youngest children start on their journey of becoming life-long readers. We do this by bringing our books, rhymes and poems alive! 

We follow a book based curriculum with books at the heart of everything we do; we immerse the children within the book and develop their understanding of the sequence of the story, poem and rhyme alongside developing their language. We also have fun creating our own stories. We actively engage the children in regular performance of poems, rhymes and stories to develop our oracy skills. 

Word Reading

Phonics

At Tyldesley Primary School, we use the Little Wandle (revised letters and sounds) scheme as a basis for teaching phonics.

Nursery teach the 'Foundations to Phonics' part of the scheme and have a daily phonics session based on Phase 1 phonics and identification of sounds. 

Reception children start phonics during the first full week of the autumn 1 term and build up their knowledge of phonemes as the year progresses.

(Please see information below for the progression of phonemes in reception as well as the parents link for the Little Wandle website and the link for the phonics section of our website.)

Reading Practice Sessions

Reception children read to an adult 3 times a week; this is done as part of a small group. The children read books that match their phonics ability. The children have sessions based on decoding, prosody and comprehension. Once the children have read the books 3 times, they take the books home to practice. Reading known books at home helps to build up the children's fluency.

Home Reading

Each week, the nursery children have the opportunity to bring home a sharing book from our sharing shelf. This book is for parents to read to our nursery children and for the children to enjoy sharing a book. The titles we share within our school day are available for the children to bring home and share with their parents.

In reception, the children also have access to a sharing shelf with books to take home for their parents to read to them. (Again the sharing shelf contains books that we have shared within our provision). Reception children also take home a reading book weekly; these books have been practised at school within the Little Wandle reading practice sessions.

Reading Sharing Shelves

Reading Buddies

In reception, when we start reading at home, we adopt our very own reading buddy. This is a little, cuddly creature who likes to our share reading time with us. They love to listen to us reading, but also love to listen to our adult reading to us.