Phonics and reading
There has been a huge shift in the teaching of reading over recent years. This is having a enormous impact and helping many children to read and spell effectively. Phonics is recommended as the first reading strategy that children should be taught. At Felmore Primary School, phonics runs alongside other teaching methods to help children develop vital reading skills and to give them a love of reading and the skills to write and spell skilfully.
At Felmore, we aim for our children to:
- enjoy reading
- develop good reading habits
- read for pleasure and information
- understand and appreciate our literacy heritage
Our curriculum is underpinned by the desire to ensure that our pupils are able to successful recognise and read/decode words and comprehend what they have read and our provision is linked to our themed learning. We also use independent learning experiences to expand our pupils' knowledge and exposure to genres and texts.
At Felmore Primary School, reading and phonics are taught in accordance with the National Curriculum (2014) and Letters and Sounds. We use the Pearson's Phonics scheme, "Bug Club," to help us to do this effectively.
All staff at the school have received extensive training and have a shared understanding of how to teach children to read and write and their journey begins in the Early Years Foundation Stage where phonics is introduced using the scheme above. Their journey continues in Key Stage 1 and beyond.
Please do contact us for further details of our phonics provision if you need further information.
Bug Club can also be accessed at home and each child has their own log in details.
Writing
We have high expectations of our pupils in all areas of the curriculum and in school life. Writing is no exception.
Our writing is taught both explicitly and in a cross curricular way through all subjects. Writing at Felmore is meaningful and our pupils are taught to write for a range of purposes.
Felmore pupils are taught to write and present work to a high standard through a progressive framework that is based on the needs of our learners. They are taught to write in a variety of styles for a variety of audiences. Key learning is taught and revisited and our staff use a variety of different strategies to teach pupils to write well.
Spelling, grammar and punctuation are taught both independently of writing lessons and learning is also embedded into other writing learning experiences.
Linking to reading, we use high quality texts, modelled, guided and shared writing to demonstrate good practice and to teach pupils how to effectively plan, edit, revise and present their work.
Handwriting skills are taught throughout the school and pupils are expected to use a neat, cursive script and present work to a high standard.
Maths
Maths is an integral part of our curriculum and it is taught discretely and as part of our cross-curricular learning within other subjects and within our Learning Means the World curriculum. By doing this, we are able to build upon our learners' abilities to apply, reason and master each aspect of the curriculum. They will then be given the skills and the confidence to succeed and to use mathematics to effectively communicate.
Our learning is based on the White Rose scheme and our learning journeys are progressive but thorough. Felmore pupils are taught concepts and build on these skills in order to apply their learning to different contexts and to challenging problems in a positive and confident way. They are also taught to "master" each concept. Learning and teaching is revisited and skills built on progressively using a plethora of teaching and learning experiences.