Mr Steven Ollis

Reading

At St John with St Mark, early reading and writing skills are taught in EYFS and Year 1 using Little Wandle.

Please look at our Phonics page for further information. 

 

In NURSERY all children:

Are introduced to the first 30 sounds in short weekly sessions.

 

In RECEPTION all children:

Read storybooks and non-fiction books closely matched to their developing phonic knowledge

Take home storybooks to share

Read with fluency and expression

Learn to spell using known sounds

Write confidently by practising what they want to write out loud first

Work well with a partner.

 

By the end of YEAR 1 all children:

Are accurate and speedy readers. 

To support your child in developing their reading skills, please click here to the Read Write Inc parent support page

 

Writing

 

At St John with St Mark, it is acknowledged that writing is a crucial skill which is required by all children in order for them to make progress in all other curriculum areas. It is also acknowledged that writing is not always an easy skill to acquire. We therefore ensure that writing is always high on our agenda of key priorities.
 

At school, all children follow our Route to Writing structure. This allows them to understand the various stages necessary to produce an effective piece of writing. These are the stages of the route:  Share - Features - Read - Model - Write - Edit - Redraft

Our aim is to make the writing process very explicit for our children in order to clarify their understanding. We also utilise a vocabulary checklist to help the children in developing language for writing. Please click here for our vocabulary checklist.
 

To support your child with writing at home please:

  • Encourage them to write for a range of real-life purposes
    Shopping lists
    Stories
    Emails
    Postcards
    Letters
    Messages
    Diaries
      
  • Remind them to use punctuation
    Capital letters
    Full stops
    Commas
    Question marks
    Speech marks
    Exclamation marks
    Colons
    Semicolons
    Dashes 
  • Remind them to write neatly and take pride in the presentation of their writing