Learning to read is lots of fun! Our reading programme includes reading to children, reading with children and reading by children.

It is wonderful that reading folders are coming to school every day and the children are doing a great job putting them in the correct group box before school. Having your reading folder at school every day also ensures children can read their books both at school and home. Rereading familiar texts provides children with reading 'mileage', and helps enormously in the development of fluency, phrasing and expression.

Our guided reading groups enjoy their books together most days. This provides opportunities for children to learn the skills of what good readers do, like learning to decode unknown words, learning letter sounds and blends, making predictions about what might happen next, having great discussions about the books and asking questions.

In writing, we start with shared writing. This is when we plan and construct writing together. The teacher models and talks through the process of constructing a text. The children contribute their own ideas throughout this process. This provides a supportive setting to model the process of writing, focus on letters, words, and letter-sound relationships, model strategies for checking and improving and demonstrate the use of a range of forms and structures in written language.

There are opportunities in a guided writing group for children to try writing independently, to learn to write high frequency words, and to play literacy games together.