“Wherever I am, if I’ve got a book with me,
I have a place I can go and be happy.” J.K. Rowling
At Sandhills Community Primary School we believe that a child’s ability to communicate is vital to all aspects of their learning. We encourage our children to become confident and enthusiastic speakers, readers and writers, so we provide a broad range of daily activities for children to develop and apply their speaking, listening, reading and writing skills. Here at Sandhills we embrace a creative curriculum so English learning spans across this, which enables children to develop the skills that are so important in life and in the wider world.
Children are given a wide range of opportunities to develop their skills of speaking and listening. Sandhills encourages children to talk confidently to one another as well as an audience and to talk in role; these activities will provide them with the necessary skills to take turns, listen carefully, challenge ideas of others and respond to questions.
Reading is an important skill and at Sandhills we encourage our children to develop a love of books. Our Literacy lessons allow children to share and discuss texts from a range of genres which complement and support our creative curriculum. The school teaches phonics using the Read Write Inc programme, which is a cohesive and creative approach to teaching reading and writing. They are taught to read using a wide range of reading strategies. Books used include books from different published reading schemes, including Oxford Reading Tree, alongside other materials. At Sandhills each class has its own reading corner with a wide range of age appropriate fiction and non-fiction texts that the children can choose to read at school and at home.
In Year 1, we use the Read, Write Inc. phonics program to teach English. A range of stories which are linked to the topic are shared with the children and used to help the children with their reading and writing skills. This continues in the Autumn Term of Year 2, before children finish the program when they have reached an appropriate reading level.
Sandhills incorporates aspects of Story Telling and Talk for Writing to support the children in developing their writing skills. Spelling, grammar and punctuation are embedded in all lessons across the curriculum and also are taught on their own in separate lessons. We encourage our children to magpie ideas from a range of texts to support their development and understanding of writing for different purposes.