Stanton Community Primary School and Nursery

At Stanton, we put great emphasis on mastering the spoken word as well as reading and writing. For us, learning English is about giving our pupils the confidence to communicate and access a lifetime of opportunities through literacy.

The ongoing progress of modern technology and the use of online games with ever younger children makes the teaching and learning of speaking, reading and writing skills even more necessary for our lives and useful tools for people’s cognitive development in contemporary society.

Close links are therefore forged with the subject of Oracy throughout the school. The first experience a child will have of communication will be verbal and often in the home. The child then builds on this oral communication, taking their own interest in books, taking meaning from pictures, grounded in their own experiences until, through the use of the alphabetic code, they can begin to make sense of the letters on the page.  We acknowledge this vital step for beginning readers and so ensure that our entire staff have a sound knowledge of phonics and how early reading and writing is taught.

Our English curriculum has been developed by CUSP ensuring that there is clear progression of skills in reading and writing. There is a variety of texts for the children to access which work alongside the skills. We feel that it is important for children to access a variety of texts from different time periods, cultures and writing styles.

Reading is at the heart of our curriculum because we believe it is the gateway to a life enriched with culture and experiences and enables us to make informed decisions. Through reading children develop the skills of understanding, analysing, evaluating and summarising as well as developing empathy, their own opinions and challenging stereotypes. Our school library is a key to our curriculum supporting our CUSP lessons, Little Wandle as well as our intent to develop a love of reading in every child. It is even more important as the village does not have its own library and not all parents can access their nearest local library. The language of books, even books aimed at the very youngest children, is different to spoken language, so reading widely and being read to is a wonderful source of new words and new patterns of language. Children will also come across the same words in different contexts through explicit vocabulary instruction, helping them to form a better idea of their meaning. Reading also improves grammar and spelling and from that we develop writing skills.

Studies by Domico (1993) and Richgels (1995) suggest that children's ability to read words is tied to their ability to write words in a somewhat reciprocal relationship. The more opportunities children have to write, the greater the likelihood that they will reproduce spellings of words they have seen and heard. Kondrat tells us ‘reading skills serve as a foundation for writing’ (2009); and ‘Writing improves the effectiveness of the person’s word usage in both written and oral speech’. We believe that learning to write is important as it enables us to express our feelings and record our learning in all areas of the curriculum. Our choice of using continuous cursive handwriting writing helps children improve their spelling as the hand motions required to form the words encourage muscle memory. At the same time the natural flow helps the process become automatic and develop stamina for writing longer pieces.

To conclude it is our intent that children will speak, read, and write proficiently and that they have a love of the English Language.