The strategy is organised in a way that ensures that all the children develop their reading skills with their teacher through shared and guided reading. Shared reading is work undertaken by the whole class sharing the same text taken from a book, article or poem. The teacher helps the children analyse the text for spelling, grammar, content, structure, etc.
Guided reading is undertaken in small groups where the teacher helps the children develop their own reading strategies. Children have opportunities to read to parent helpers and other adult helpers in the school. Those children requiring additional help will read with their teacher and other adults more frequently than children with good reading skills. We expect parents to help their children develop their reading skills by sharing their reading books with them at home on a regular basis.
The literacy programme also ensures that the children undertake some written work each day and are given direct instruction in the skills of writing. Shared and guided writing makes up the core of these activities with teachers modelling the writing process and ensuring that the children understand and use the proper conventions of grammar for their writing. Spelling skills are developed through the teaching of phonics to the younger children and spelling patterns to the older children. There is a detailed and structured programme of work for the teaching of spelling. Extended writing, stories, descriptive and other longer forms of writing are undertaken during the literacy lessons and also during other subject lessons.
The aim of the literacy lesson is to ensure that the children receive direct instruction in all the core skills of reading, writing, spelling and handwriting through a structured and well planned approach this remains at the centre of all our teaching of English and literacy.
Literacy is not, however, a free-standing subject. The skills of literacy are important to all other subjects and as such are developed through the teaching of all the other national curriculum subjects.
