At Bellfield Infants School we aim to provide a curriculum where reading and writing are taught in both a subject specific and cross-curricular way. We believe that good readers make good writers and so we actively teach using Pie Corbett’s ‘Talk for Writing’ approach. ‘Reading as a Reader’ and ‘Reading as a Writer’ are both necessary pre-requisites to independent writing.

Grammar is taught explicitly through the text we are studying that term, as research shows that knowledge is best internalised when taught within a familiar context.

Writing is a primary means of expression, both for personal cognitive purposes and for communicating meaning with others. Pupils learn how to write with confidence, fluency, imagination and accuracy by orchestrating their knowledge of context and composition (text level), grammatical knowledge (sentence level) and knowledge of phonics and word recognition (word level). We provide a wide variety of reasons and purposes for writing accompanied by child initiated and role-play writing.

All children’s writing is valued and their writing is frequently displayed throughout school.

Reading

At this school we teach reading through a mixture of whole class, small group and individual reading opportunities. We use a range of books, covering different genres rather than relying on one scheme alone. In this way we cover depth and breadth within each level. Our books are grouped according to nationally recognised Book Band levels and are available for the children to read at home and in school.

For information on how we teach Phonics please click here.

English Websites for Children

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks1/literacy/ 

Alphablocks - A great show to learn how to say your sounds

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/alphablocks