Reading

Rationale:

Pre-reading – Pre-reading activities support pupils to develop their visual memory, attention and the ability to identify objects. Observing objects, symbols, pictures and patterns supports pupils to develop meaning and the ability to discriminate.

Pre-reading skills are integral to the development of communication and to language development; pupils are enabled to communicate their likes and dislikes and make real choices.

Reading – Reading is a tool to develop a pupils’ understanding and their ability to make connections. It supports pupils to anticipate events and experiences, understand sequences and anticipate what is coming next. This also reduces anxiety.

The quality of adults' interactions with children during reading activities affects their vocabulary acquisition and cognitive development. Relational approaches support children to express themselves. Communicating at the child's level of understanding using their preferred communication system is critical to supporting the child's confidence to express themselves and to support the development of their understanding and use of language.

Learning the skill of decoding words or recognizing whole words gives access to the community and promotes independence.

 

Pre-reading and reading skills give our pupils a voice. Reading is an opportunity for children to have access to their own culture through the wide range of cultural resources and books used.

Aim:

We teach reading for meaning and to be functional. It is embedded throughout the daily timetable using objects of reference, photos, labels and symbols. These are also used throughout the school environment.

We teach a positive attitude to reading and storytelling by organising reading corners in the classrooms, reading lessons in the school library.

We promote reading and storytelling for pleasure. We practice reading-comprehension skills through the use of sensory stories, personalised photo and symbol books, big books and personalised songbooks with symbols and photos.

For some pupils we use the Oxford Reading Tree scheme.

Planned storytime is a daily activity on every class timetable.   

Writing

Rationale:

Pre-writing activities support pupils to develop their visual memory, attention and the ability to identify objects.

Developing gross and fine motor skills refines a pupil’s ability to move their fingers and hands to be more precise. There are four important areas to develop including, hand eye coordination, finger dissociation, the ability to start and stop and finger strength/tone.

We promote the skills of mark making to support pupils to develop their creative, physical and sensory skills.

We support pupils to connect the forming of symbols and letters, which have a meaning. We use the everyday setting to support pupils to communicate their needs.

Aim:

Writing activities will be motivating, functional and meaningful.

Pupils will have the opportunity to experience and develop skills in the following aspects of learning: