At Alma Primary, we are becoming remarkable readers and wondrous writers!

We provide an inspiring English curriculum which develops a love of reading, writing and spoken language. We strive to create a community of confident speakers, readers and writers through making learning engaging and exciting for our children. We encourage a life-long love of language and communication by developing literacy skills through high-quality texts and books that interest, inspire and motivate our children.  

We believe that reading is the gateway of all learning. For this reason, we are committed to ensuring that each child at Alma becomes a fluent, confident and passionate reader. High quality texts are chosen to capture children’s imagination and to develop deep thinking in English and across all areas of learning.

Phonics

The phonics programme of study begins from Reception and continues through to Year 2. We follow the ‘Supersonic Phonics Friends’ scheme throughout the EYFS and Key Stage 1. It is a fully systematic, synthetic programme for teaching phonic skills. It aims to build children's speaking and listening skills in their own right as well as to prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills.

Alongside effective use of phonics, children are encouraged to develop fluency when reading as well as demonstrating an understanding of what they have read. The children receive regular individual and shared reading sessions as well as the opportunity to listen to a rich diet of quality children’s literature during whole class story times.

Guided Reading lessons take place across the school, with an emphasis on developing fluency and comprehension skills. In these sessions, we use ‘Literacy Shed VIPERS’ to help develop the core skills in aiding children’s understanding of texts.

The Literacy Shed VIPERS are:

• Vocabulary
• Inference
• Prediction
• Explain/Effect on the reader
• Retrieve
• Summarise/Sequence

It is our priority to nurture children to become eloquent and articulate speakers and writers. We aim to expose children to a wide range of purposeful vocabulary, which encourages them to include the same level of words in their independent work. We create a culture where children take immense pride in their writing through both presentation and content. In conjunction with their writing lessons, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, children have SPaG lessons (Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar). Children are encouraged to write a range of genres such as: narrative, non-chronological report, diary entries, letters, explanation texts, persuasive texts, biographies, instructions, poetry, plays and many more.