Home/School Reading and Phonics Partnership

Reading

Reading and sharing stories is a huge part of the Nursery curriculum. In our Nursery at Shenley we share a book or story every single day! 

Throughout the term we will focus on several key texts, books or stories which we will read everyday and base some of our other learning activities around. Sharing the same story for a period of time helps the children to internalise and become familiar with the story. If a story has a repetitive theme or repeated refrain we encourage the children to join in or add actions to remind them of different parts of the story. 

We have recently developed our reading area to encourage children to choose to look at books during their child initiated learning or 'CHIL' time. We also have a range of different books in each area of the classroom linked to the resources which are in that area. 

Reading to young children helps to develop vocabulary, concentration and listening skills and helps to encourage a love of books and reading. It also helps children to learn pre-reading skills such as knowing which way up to hold a book, turning the pages one at a time and understanding that print carries meaning. 

We recommend reading to your child everyday at home and talking to them about the story or book you have shared together.  Below are some leaflet which give some great tips on sharing stories with your child and some questions you can ask them about the book.

We also visit our school library each week. The children will choose a book to take home and share. 

Phase One Phonics 

In Nursery we have a daily Phonics lesson. The majority of Nursery children are working on 'Phase One' of the Letters and Sounds Phonics Programme. Phase One is all about listening to different sounds, hearing and saying the sounds in words and making different sounds with our mouths or instruments. It is divided into 7 aspects. 

■ Aspect 1: General sound discrimination – environmental sounds

■ Aspect 2: General sound discrimination – instrumental sounds

■ Aspect 3: General sound discrimination – body percussion

■ Aspect 4: Rhythm and rhyme

■ Aspect 5: Alliteration 

■ Aspect 6: Voice sounds

■ Aspect 7: Oral blending and segmenting

For more information on each of the aspects please click the link below which will take you to the 'Letters and Sounds' website. Alternatively you can look at the 'Letters and Sounds' document. 

As the children develop their phonological awareness we will begin to follow and introduce the Read Write Ink programme. This will mainly take place during the Summer Term. For more information on the Read Write Ink programme click the link below.