Communication and Language
Communication and language is one of the three prime areas within the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS).
Each prime area is divided into early learning goals, for communication and language these are: Listening and Attention, Understanding and Speaking.
As children develop speaking and listening skills, they are building the foundations for literacy and learning. They are learning key skills such as how to express themselves and make friends. Reception children are provided with lots of opportunities to have conversations with staff and peers. They hear staff modelling language and introducing new words. They learn language better when they're engaged with things that fascinate, challenge and excite them. Children need to hear and say new words often to strengthen the connections in their brains and to keep building their vocabulary.
Reading
Reading is integral to our rich and diverse curriculum and begins as soon as children enter our school in Year R developing their use of language through role play, familiar stories, storytelling and child initiated play.
Phonics is key to successful reading. Our early readers will begin their reading journey through the structure of the ‘Letters and Sounds’ programme. Initial sounds of the alphabet are taught and used in a variety of ways to enable children to blend sounds together to read individual words. As the children progress through the year they learn to recognise and read digraphs (/oo/ /ai/) and trigraphs (/igh/ /ear/) as they develop their fluency to read whole sentences. Running alongside the teaching of phonics children improve their visual memory skills and sight vocabulary by learning key words that cannot be read phonetically e.g. was, the, said.
Writing
As soon as children enter our school they are encouraged to write through the extensive and enriching role play opportunities within the Early Years environment.
Early writing is a powerful means of communication and may take the form of mark making through child initiated play.
Throughout the year children are taught to apply their phonic knowledge to write initial sounds in words, progressing on to CVC words (consonant vowel consonant words e.g. cat / hen) then rehearsing and recording simple sentences.
An important element of early writing at our school is to develop children’s fine motor skills. It is essential for them to develop an appropriate pencil grip that will enable them to write letters of the alphabet using the correct formation.
By the end of the year children will be able to construct and write simple sentences and phrases often extending the meaning by using conjunctions such as ‘and’.
Maths
Through our rich and varied curriculum, we offer our children a wide variety of experiences, so that they become familiar and confident in using mathematics in everyday life.
Counting is an essential part of early mathematical understanding and this is developed across the reception year through child initiated play and adult led learning. Children are taught to recite and recognise numerals zero to twenty in order to compare numbers and solve practical problems.
Through rich first hand experiences the children will also explore 2D and 3D shapes and compare measures in a variety of contexts. The children are taught the use of correct mathematical vocabulary in order to help them reason and explain their thinking.
KS1
English
English is the vehicle by which all areas of learning are brought to life.
It provides the power to communicate and to share, and to convey our inner most thoughts, feelings and desires. A true love of English brings rich rewards from enjoying the rhythm, repetition and patterns of language to gain entry into others imaginations through story, poetry and drama and in discovering new knowledge from reference, information and factual accounts.
Our curriculum has, at its heart, a focus on developing children’s reading, writing and communication skills in all subjects. Through English lessons we enthuse and excite children with a wide range of literature, and encourage children to select books from classrooms and the library that challenge them and help them to develop confidence in themselves as readers. The skills of writing are taught through English, as well as through writing opportunities in other curriculum areas, linking to each year group’s themes. High expectations encourage high standards of spelling, grammar and presentation.
Skilful story telling keeps us spellbound and play encourages us to test out our use of language through imitation and rehearsal. English is vital to opening up learning of all kinds and across all subject boundaries.
Reading
We believe that reading is a partnership between the school, home and our wider community.
“Reading is a life skill it feeds children’s imagination and opens up a treasure house of wonder and joy for curious minds.” The National Curriculum 2013.
Our Reading Strategies
- Sound out and blend the word.
- Chunk longer words into syllables.
- Skip the word and then go back.
- Use the picture for clues.
- Read the sentence again and check it makes sense!
Year 1
Children enrich and enhance their love of reading by broadening and deepening their experiences through different genres, thus further developing their fluency and understanding.
The reading journey continues in Year 1, building on the phonics foundation taught in Year R, by learning alternative phonic patterns (e.g. play/plane/rain) and being a
le to apply this strategy to decode unfamiliar words. Children expand their knowledge of different word uses and how it affects the meaning and their understanding of the text; such as tenses being changed by suffixes e.g. jump – jumping – jumped.
Daily reading and re-reading of familiar texts improves children’s fluency enabling them to be confident readers who can discuss and share their opinions that are, wherever possible, integrated within the current project.
Further development of reading strategies continues to improve our children’s comprehension, sight vocabulary and expression enabling them to tackle more challenging texts.
Year 2
Throughout Year 2 children continue to develop an increased independence of the application of reading strategies, as well as their ability to make sense of what they have read and, through the use of inference, gain knowledge and understanding of meaning beyond the text.
Building on their previous phonic knowledge children learn about the most frequently used rules that govern word construction, such as suffixes, plurals and word exceptions. Children extend their knowledge and understanding of how tenses are changed by word endings e.g. -ness / -ful / -less / -ly and that some words can be spelt in different ways, their/there/they’re, and begin to understand their use in different contexts.
Children are introduced to increasingly complex texts that create a sense of suspense, humour and interest which strengthens and sustains their stamina to read at length.
By the end of Year 2 children are increasingly using their reading skills to research, refine and present their findings to a range of audiences.
Writing
Our curriculum projects inspire children to fully engage with their writing, have a clear awareness of audience and an acknowledgement of the power and emotion that their writing can invoke.
Through various stimuli, children are encouraged to create their own purposes to write within an atmosphere of mutual respect where all writing is valued.
Year 1
Building on the oral skills developed throughout Year R, children begin to write using different genre features, such as instructions, stories, recounts and reports, increasingly becoming more aware of their audience.
As their writing develops across Year 1, more sophisticated punctuation is taught and used to give shape, understanding and excitement to their writing. As their writing develops they show a creativity and fluency in engaging with the reader to communicate their ideas.
As early spellers children use their increasingly developed phonic knowledge to communicate effectively in writing, but as they are taught to apply spelling rules to words that are unable to be sounded out phonetically (was, they, have), they begin to understand when such rules apply.
Year 2
As children enter year two they are able to sustain longer periods of writing as they begin to master the many writing conventions.
They use increasingly more sophisticated vocabulary, punctuation and humour to lead a reader through a series of developed ideas that move away from their own experience, and into more imaginative themes.
As children are taught more complex spelling rules they begin to understand and apply rules such as prefixes and suffixes (changing the meaning of the word happy/unhappy/happily/happiest), contractions (they’re, can’t, didn’t) and ‘silent’ letters (knee, write, little).
By the end of Year 2 children are able to evaluate their writing, often against their own generated ‘success criteria’. By using simple editing skills they are able to improve and enhance their original piece of writing, through alternative word choices, appropriate punctuation and correct tense.
Further development of reading strategies continue to improve our children’s comprehension, sight vocabulary and expression enabling them to tackle more challenging texts.
Throughout Year 2 children continue to develop an increased independence of the application of reading strategies, as well as their ability to make sense of what they have read and through the use of inference, gain knowledge and understanding of meaning beyond the text.
Building on their previous phonic knowledge children learn about the most frequently used rules that govern word construction, such as suffixes, plurals and word exceptions. Children extend their knowledge and understanding of how tenses are changed by endings in words e.g. -ness / -ful / -less / -ly, and that some words can be spelt in different ways, their/there/they’re, and begin to understand their use in different contexts.
Children are introduced to increasingly complex texts that create a sense of suspense, humour and interest which strengthens and sustains their stamina to read at length.
By the end of Year 2 children are increasingly using their reading skills to research, refine and present their findings to a range of audiences.
Mathematics
Mathematics is a creative discipline which transcends cultural boundaries; a truly global language, essential to everyday life.
Mathematics develops thinking and provides a uniquely powerful set of tools to understand and change the world. It can stimulate moments of pleasure and wonder when a problem is solved for the first time or a more elegant solution is discovered. Mathematics encourages perseverance, curiosity and logical thinking. The seeking of patterns gains insights into its structures, beauty and power.
At St Andrew’s CE Infant School we recognise the importance of mathematics in everyday life and, as such, aim to equip our children with the mathematical knowledge and skills they need to succeed in this subject. We aim for children to become fluent in the fundamental mathematics, reason mathematically and solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of problems with increasing sophistication.
Mathematics is taught using a wide range of resources and practical activities including games and investigational work to help the children achieve their full potential in this subject area. Lessons are varied and tailored to suit the needs of the children in each class, and are linked, where appropriate, to other curriculum areas especially ICT and Science.
Year 1
As the children enter Year 1 they start to explore numbers up to one hundred, how they fit into our number system and begin to understand the pattern and relationship between these numbers.
Throughout the year the children are taught how to partition and recombine numbers to enable them to understand addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and apply this knowledge in order to solve one step problems. Children are taught a variety of ways to represent their work.
Counting becomes more complex in Year 1 as the children learn to count in multiples of 2, 5 and 10. They then begin to apply this knowledge in different contexts, e.g. shopping and money exchange, counting pairs of socks and for grouping and sharing large amounts of objects.
Fraction, shape and measure are integrated into the Year 1 projects to give them a real context and purpose where children can apply their skills. Children are taught a half and quarter as fractions of a shape, a number and a quantity and how to apply this knowledge to solve a problem.
During Year 1 children will use and compare different types of quantities and measures using non-standard units and start to use common standard measures such as metres, litres and grams.
The understanding and use of mathematical vocabulary is taught and further developed to enable children to engage with others to explain their strategies and thinking.
Year 2
As children become more confident with numbers up to 100, children are introduced to larger numbers to develop further recognition of patterns within the number system and represent them in different ways.
During the year, children learn how to partition numbers in different ways to support subtraction. They become more fluent and apply knowledge of numbers to reason with, discuss and solve problems that emphasise the value of each digit in two-digit numbers.
The children will extend their understanding of mathematical vocabulary in all four number operations, with the ability to recognise how to solve a calculation through understanding the vocabulary used. During multiplication and division, children will group and share, use arrays and repeated addition to solve questions.
In fraction, shape and measure, children continue to compare, sort and solve practical problems, using reasoning to explain confidently. Fractions also include recognising the equivalence of one half and two quarters.
Year 2 includes the addition of statistics in the maths curriculum. Children will use questioning to record, interpret, collate, organise and compare information.
