At Hamp Nursery and Infants School we understand that reading underpins everything we teach our children. We strive to develop a secure knowledge of the foundations for reading, writing, and speaking and listening. We believe that for all our children to become fluent readers and writers, phonics must be taught through a systematic and structured phonics programme. We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised to plan and provide daily engaging phonics lessons.

We believe that all learners need to develop a secure knowledge base in all areas of Literacy, which follows a clear pathway of progression from a starting point that is appropriate to each learner. We intend that every learner will develop an ability to communicate freely, effectively and confidently in spoken and written English. We strive to help our learners to understand how language enables them to experience and appreciate their world and also to experience the world of imagination. In our approach, we will provide activities and links across the whole curriculum where children can develop and practise their understanding and use of English. We recognise and value the language skills that children have already acquired and build on these, taking into account individual strengths and areas for development. 

Speaking and listening

We aim for our children to confidently speak clearly, and to listen carefully with understanding in a wide variety of situations. 

We intend to promote and model good speaking and listening throughout all aspects of our learning and school life. We will explicitly teach the skills for speaking and listening to our learners. We strive for all our learners to produce sounds in order to say words with clarity and to covey their ideas. They then use these skills to speak in full sentences, that will them allow them to be able to hold a discussion and to share and discuss ideas to further their learning. All learners will be given a wide range of opportunities to learn, and practise spoken language, to use and understand this in turn this will impact on reading and later comprehension skill.

Reading

We aim for our children to leave Hamp Nursery and Infant School as fluent, enthusiastic, independent and reflective readers.

We value reading for pleasure highly and work hard as a school to grow our Reading for Pleasure pedagogy. Throughout all stages of learning at Hamp Nursery and Infant School, we will promote a love and passion for reading. We want every child to be a reader that is fluent, confident and has been exposed to a variety of high-quality texts. Reading influences our whole curriculum and children are given opportunities throughout the day to read and be read to in different contexts. We believe that phonics and early reading is of the highest importance for all learners, and that this will lead into them developing their comprehension skills as and when they are ready. 

We also ensure that learners will listen to a wide variety of texts that are read to them in different contexts throughout their time at our school. A wide breadth of literature is important so that our learners can experience different vocabulary and grammar that will in turn improve both their comprehension and writing ability. We encourage parents to share books and other reading materials with their children. 

Writing (Including Handwriting and SPaG)

We aim for our children to write confidently, clearly and enthusiastically for a range of purposes.

We aspire to create writers that are interesting, imaginative and have a flair for writing. All learners will learn to write a variety of Fiction and Non-Fiction texts throughout their time and Hamp Nursery and Infant School. It is our intention that children will be able to apply their phonics in their writing. We strive to make writers that can spell quickly and accurately. We want all learners to take pride in their work. They will be taught necessary presentation skills and show them how to form letters to create handwriting that is legible. As our learners progress through the key stages, they will be taught to plan, revise and edit their work in a way that is appropriate to their outcomes. We want our children to understand the need to organise and communicate their ideas effectively and accurately in written form, to feel they have something of value to write about and to know they have “something to say”.