This booklet is all about Communication, Language and Literacy and aims to give you a better understanding of what goes on in our nursery and school and what you can do to help at home.  It aims to explain the opportunities your child will have to learn to speak confidently, listen carefully, read, write, form their letters correctly and enjoy the ‘imaginative’ world!

 

These are very exciting and important years in your child’s development.  They will be accessing a wide and varied curriculum and developing key life skills.

Communication, Language and Literacy encompasses key life skills.  It includes the ability
• to speak and listen in different situations and for different purposes.
• to express yourself and communicate with others.
• to access and read a wide range of books and simple books and texts.
• to write for a variety of purposes.

These key skills are used in everything the children do and go on to do.  For children to make friends and play with others they need to be able to speak and listen.

 

Many children come into nursery and school already possessing good speaking and listening skills.  They are able to ask for help and make their feelings known.

 

At nursery and school we aim to provide a wide range of opportunities for your child to develop their communication skills.  These include:

• Sharing quality books, poems and rhymes
• Role play and imaginative play
• Singing, music and dance
• Investigative activities and collaborative work
• Using all their senses to access sand, clay, water and malleable materials
• Role play writing and mark making
• Games – circle, traditional and board games
• Using small and large PE equipment
• Model making
• Using the computer and listening station
• Regular time for news and important events.

 

Adults play a large part in the development of communication skills.  We aim to provide good role models through letting children see us writing and reading, making mistakes and re-drafting, introducing new vocabulary, and joining in with role play.  The children also model what they see at home and in the world around them.  They answer the telephone and take messages, write cards and letters, read the newspaper, and ask politely for things.

 

The children will learn these key communication skills both through structured teaching as well as through self-initiated learning (their play).

 

This area of the curriculum is divided into two sections; Language for Communication and Language for Thinking.
They are encompassed in everything the children do and the ability to communicate either verbally or non-verbally allows children to make their needs known.

Children start with non-verbal communication such as facial expressions developing through to being able to negotiate, clarify, organise and sequence their thoughts and ideas.

Our aim is to provide opportunities which will build upon, develop and extend your child’s speaking and listening skills to ensure that they are working towards the following Early Learning Goals. 

 

• Interact with others, negotiating plans and activities and taking turns in conversations.
• Enjoy listening to and using spoken and written language, and readily turn to it in their play and learning.
• Sustain attentive listening, responding to what they have heard by relevant comments, questions or actions.
• Listen with enjoyment and respond to stories, songs, and other music, rhymes and poems and make up their own stories, songs, rhymes and poems.
• Extend their vocabulary exploring the meanings and sounds of new words.
• Speak clearly and audibly with confidence and control and show awareness of the listener, for example by their use of conventions such as greetings.

 

• Use language to imagine and recreate roles and experiences.
• Use talk to organise, sequence and clarify thinking, ideas, feelings and events.

 

We provide opportunities to:
• Use a wide range of books, poems, songs and rhymes to introduce the children to story language, vocabulary and rhyming words.
• Talk about books, predicting the story, describing the pictures, retelling the main points either verbally, pictorially or through role play.
• Play lots of listening games where the children listen to sounds and guess where they came from.  We use musical instruments, body noises, voices, everyday sounds.
• Do lots of rhyme work through songs, poems, nursery rhymes, clapping patterns and onset and rime books.
• Play games with words and sounds.
• Use role play to encourage language by using familiar stories or from their own experiences.
• Work in small groups where children can talk about themselves and events.
• Play circle games which develop listening skills, taking turns or following around the circle.

• Through all our activities and opportunities we encourage the children to develop their thinking skills, through responding to questions, explaining their responses and asking questions of their own.

• Any activities like shopping, cooking, building things etc provide wonderful opportunities for language.  Describing what gooey mixture feels like, talking through what is on the shopping list etc.
• Share books daily.  Ask your child to talk about the front cover, the pictures, what the story is about, predicting what might happen on the next page, retelling the story or making up your own endings.
• Making up rhymes using rhyming words and patterns such as ‘at’, ‘og’  For example – at fat cat hat rat sat mat –a fat cat sat on a mat wearing a hat.
• Sing lots of songs and changing the words with different rhymes – bananas in pyjamas, kippers in slippers, grapes in capes.
• Play feely bag games where your child has to describe what they can feel.

What is Phonics?

 

Phonics is the teaching of letter sounds that make up many of our words.  Each of the 26 alphabet letters have names but they also make certain sounds.  The sounds they make are called Phonemes.  The English language is extremely complicated as it has so many variations on spellings!  In the Reception Year your child will be learning the first 43 sounds/phonemes using the Jolly Phonics scheme.

 

The use of phonics is an important strategy for reading, writing and spelling and is taught daily throughout Reception and Key Stage 1.  Phonics teach children to break down words into phonemes/sounds which can then be blended together in order to read the word.

For example, if reading the word ‘hand’, your child would sound out each phoneme – ‘h’ ‘a’ ‘n’ ‘d’.  They then blend it together to read the word ‘hand’.
There are 43 sounds that are taught including initial blends such as ‘ch’ ‘sh’ ‘th’, long vowel sounds such as ‘ai’ ‘ie’ ‘ee’ ‘oo’ and endings such as ‘ng’.

Once your child is able to recognise and use these sounds when reading and writing, they begin to learn all the variations of the long vowel sounds such as ‘ai’, ‘ay’, ‘a’, a-e’.
The most important aspect for your child is to be able to recognise and hear each phoneme.

 

1. s a t i p n
2. c k e h r m d
3. g o u l f b
4.  ai j oa ie ee or
5. z w ng v long oo, short oo
6. y x ch sh voived th, unvoiced th
7. qu ou oi ue er ar

 

During the Early Years Foundation Stage we are working towards the following Early Learning Goals.

• Hear and say sounds in words in the order in which they occur.
• Link sounds to letters, naming and sounding the letters of the alphabet.
• Use their phonic knowledge to write simple regular words and make phonetically plausible attempts at more complex words.

 

 

• In the nursery we concentrate on all the skills children need to develop in order to hear and say the phonemes.  These skills are very important and without them children will find it very difficult to learn the phonemes.
• We encourage children to discriminate between sounds they hear – eg environmental noises, musical instruments, body sounds.
• We encourage children to listen for rhymes and rhyming words.
• We encourage children to be good listeners through playing a variety of listening games.

 

We have a daily 5-10 minute ‘fast phonics’ session.  This consists of:

• Telling the story to go with each phoneme.
• Learning an action to help the children remember the phonemes.
• Finding children’s names or simple words that begin or end in that phoneme.
• Looking at the shape of the phoneme both printed and joined.
• Practising writing it in the air using our ‘magic’ fingers.
• Send home the sheets for each phoneme which you can use as a reference point for each phoneme and your child can work on at home.

 

Each week 4 new phonemes are introduced.  On the 5th day we practise all phonemes, sorting objects into the correct phoneme group and practising letter formation.
Once two sets of phonemes have been taught, we will begin to do some simple blending practise.  This is to help children to hear the words from the phonemes.  At first this is very tricky for your child but with daily practise they begin to hear the word.

For example, The teacher says ‘c’ ‘a’ ‘t’, the children hear ‘cat’

We also do the reverse of this where the children listen to the word and then break it down into its phonemes.
For example, the teachers say ‘cat’, the children say ‘c’ ‘a’ ‘t’.  This is very good for working out how to spell simple words.

 

Throughout the year your child will be doing lots of phonic activities.  They will include:

• Using pictures to spell simple words or reading simple words and drawing the picture.
• Sorting objects or pictures into the correct phoneme groups.
• Listening for where phonemes come in the word – at the beginning, middle or end.
•  Playing phonic games like the pussycat game(a version of hangman).
• Looking for phonic blends in books.
• Making up as many words as they can from a set of phonemes.

 

Go through the phonemes book daily to help your child instantly recognise each one

.
• Find objects that begin with each week’s phonemes.

• Look for different phonemes when sharing books.
• Play ‘I spy’ games.
• Practise blending words using the phonemes we have covered.  For example using ‘s’ ‘a’ ‘t’ ‘i’ ‘p’ ‘n’ make words like ‘it’ ‘is’ ‘pin’ ‘and’ ‘sat’.
• Help write the letter at home but please remember to use our letter formation sheet as the children need to write it correctly and bad habits are difficult to break!
• Begin to find simple words when reading a book encouraging your child to ‘sound them out’!

 

Please note that not all children learn phonetically.  Some children find it easier to read using visual clues which are taught alongside the phonics.  If your child is having difficulties then do lots of practical and visual activities with them. For example make letter shaped biscuits, use ‘soft stuff/playdough’ to make each letter shape, and continue to do the actions alongside the phoneme!

 

Reading is a key life skill which runs through everything your child will do at school and also throughout their adult life.  It is also an enjoyable key life skill and the world of books is a most magical place where we can escape into our own imaginations.  Most young children come into school with some experience of books and are already able to pick ones they like and turn the pages.  For young children reading is about making sense of printed text and the pictures.  It is also about enjoyment of stories, poems, rhymes and information books and using their imaginations to create their own stories.  The ability to read is a very complex process and requires the teaching of many different strategies in order to provide your child with enough skills to read the most complex words and make sense of what they have read.  In order to do this reading is taught in a variety of ways.

Our aim is to give you a better understanding of how your child will be taught to read.

 

During the Early Years Foundation Stage we are working towards the following

 

• Explore and experiment with sounds, words and texts.
• Retell narratives in the correct sequence, drawing on language patterns of stories.
• Read a range of familiar and common words and simple sentences independently.
• Know that print carries meaning and in English, is read from left to right and top to bottom.
• Show an understanding of the elements of stories, such as main character, sequence of events, and openings, and how information can be found in non-fiction texts to answer questions about where, who, why and how.

 

As with all of the Early Years Foundation Stage, reading goes hand in hand with writing and speaking and listening.  We aim to provide a rich and stimulating environment with good quality books which motivate the children to read, write and act out stories in their role play.

 

There are many strategies and skills that your child will need in order to become a fluent reader.  They need to be able to:

• Know what a book is and be able to turn the pages correctly.
• Concentrate whilst sharing a book either individually or in groups.
• Have access to good quality books and share them regularly with others.

• They need to be aware of print in their environment such as labels, shop signs etc.
• Know that print carries meaning and stays the same once written down.
• Know their phonemes and be able to use them to help read words
• Recognise their own name.
• Recognise key words that they can read on sight.
• Know which way the writing goes and be able to follow it with their finger, eventually word for word.
• Use their knowledge of spoken language to make sure that what they have read or been read makes sense.
• Guess unfamiliar words using the initial phoneme of the word and whether it makes sense.
• Use the pictures to help read unfamiliar words.

 

We do so many things to help your child with reading they cannot all be listed. These are the main elements:

• Each classroom provides a book corner which has a wide range of books, poems, information books and home-made books.
• We share books regularly as a whole class, in small groups and individually.
• We teach children to use the correct book vocabulary such as author, illustrator, title.
• We talk about books and use them for role play and writing activities.
• We play lots of games to build up visual skills such as Kim’s game and pairs.
• We use the pictures to help the children ‘read’ the stories.
• We read different versions of the same story so that children can see the richness of language that authors use.
• We talk about words making sure the children know what a new word means.
• The children learn to find rhyming words and make up silly sentences.
• We teach key words by looking for them in books, and by looking at each word individually and recognising the shape.
• We teach Phonics daily in the Reception Class.
• We teach ‘tricky’ words by making up silly sentences about them.
• We make our own books.

Not only does your child need to develop strategies for reading but they also need to understand and respond to what they have read.  The children need to:
• Enjoy listening to stories, rhymes, poems, and songs.
• Choose to look at books independently.
• Retell a story.
• Predict what might happen next or how the story will end.
• Talk about the characters, their favourite bits and relate it to their own experiences.
• Begin to use expression when reading to themselves, from memory or when beginning to read.
• Join in with the reading starting with the repetitive language.
• Understand the language of stories and be able to use their own ‘story’ language when reading for themselves.

 

If children develop a love of reading at an early age then they become motivated to read for themselves. 

 

• READ, READ, READ, READ, READ!
• Share books with your child daily.
• Talk about the book – what is it about, what will happen next, how will it end.
• Retell the story using the pictures.
• Use the pictures to tell the story and discuss what is happening in each one.  Pictures are a vital clue to working out words.
• Let the children see you reading.  You are an important role model to them so let them know what you are reading and why.
• Take them to the library.  It is a cheap way of ensuring that your child has a supply of good quality books.
• Look for signs when out such as MacDonalds, warning signs, road signs etc.
• The computer is a great way to motivate children to read without them even knowing it, so if you have one, use it.
• Children also need their own reading choices and comics are a good way for motivating children!
• Keep it fun.  Making children sit down to do their reading can be a chore so pick a time when your child is willing and not tired.

 

Writing is an important way of communicating.  As adults we write all the time – letters, sign receipts, book appointments, write reminders to ourselves.  Children watch adults writing and mimic it.  They begin to make marks in their own role play, such as taking phone messages and booking into their diary or writing a card to someone.  They begin to see the importance of the written word and how they themselves are writers.

 

To become writers, children have to go through a series of quite complex steps.  They have to:

• Know that words can be written down and read back.
• Know that the written message stays the same each time you read it.
• Know that writing conveys a message.
• See themselves as writers and be willing to make marks.
• Have control over their chosen mark making implement.
• Recognise the difference between drawing and writing.
• Know that writing is made up of letter shapes and then words.
• Be able to form letter shapes.
• Know writing goes from left to right and top to bottom

Children come in to nursery and school at different stages as writers.  Some children are still simply making marks on the paper whilst others are writing clear letter shapes or their name.

 

 Our aim is to take each child from their stage in ‘emergent’ writing (their own style of writing) and move them towards achieving the following Early Learning Goals;

 

• Use their phonic knowledge to write simple regular words and make phonetically plausible attempts at more complex words.
• Attempt writing for different purposes, using features of different forms such as lists, stories and instructions.
• Write their own name and other things such as labels and captions and begin to form simple sentences, sometimes using punctuation.
• Use a pencil and hold it effectively to form recognisable letters, most of which are correctly formed.

 

We teach children to become writers through all areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum.  We provide opportunities to:
• Develop their own writing through lots of role play activities such as booking people into the garage, or writing out the arrest form for someone who is speeding!
• Draw and write using lots of different drawing/writing tools.
• Develop their fine motor skills through painting, modelling, tracing, making patterns in sand, chalking on the playground, using construction equipment.
• Write for a range of purposes, such as postcards, letters, shopping lists.
• See how an adult writes by modelling the writing process.
• Work with an adult to learn to: write letter shapes, write the first sound of the word, leave finger spaces, read our writing back to check it makes sense and know what they have written.
• Use the computer to write.

 

The writing process is interlinked with all the other areas of Communication, Language and Literacy.  In order to write the children have to be competent in speaking and listening.  When children first write, they use spoken language as their guide.  As they become more confident, they begin to see the difference between the spoken word and the written word.  To write good stories they need to have shared books which capture the imagination, and which provide a clear beginning, middle and end.  Through reading, they become familiar with letters, words and sentences.  They begin to see capital letters and punctuation.  They know which way the writing goes and use this in their own writing.  They use their phonic knowledge to try and spell words, and some trickier words they have learnt to spell by remembering what they look like.  They need to be able to form the letters correctly through handwriting practice and fine motor skills.

 

 

• Let them see you writing and tell them what you are writing and why.
• Make sure you have paper, pencils, crayons etc available for your child to use.
• Encourage them to use writing when they are playing.
• Point out writing when out, such as shop signs, road signs, prices, timetables and talk about its purpose.
• Scribe for your child when they describe their picture so that they can see what writing should look like.
• Make books and cards.
• Practise writing their name.

 

 

In the Foundation Stage, spelling is taught through writing, phonics and reading.  At this stage, most children are developing letter like shapes in their writing and learning what each letter looks like.  Spelling involves many skills and throughout your child’s school life, they will be taught using different skills.

In order to be a good speller, your child needs to develop 2 key skills.  These are:

• Good visual skills.
• Good memory skills.

 

Both are crucial for spelling as is the need to persevere, have a go and to know when something just doesn’t look right.

• Use their phonic knowledge to write simple regular words and make phonetically plausible attempts at more complex words.

 

• We play lots of games to build up their visual skills such as pairs, lotto, bingo.  Your child will learn to match objects, letters and words that look the same.
• Your child will use jigsaws and puzzles.
• We improve memory skills by playing games such as ‘Kim’s game’, pairs etc.
• We blend and break up simple words using the sounds we have learnt.
• We look for what letter words begin with or end in.
• We have a daily phonics lesson when we teach the sound of each phoneme and what it looks like.
• We learn tricky words by sounding them out in a funny way, making a little rhyme to go with it.
• We practise spelling simple words such as cat, hen, hand and build up to words like rain, sting.
• We play the pussycat game which is a ‘kinder’ version of hangman!
• We play with words, listening for rhymes and rhyming patterns such as ‘at’, ‘og’ etc.

Please also refer to the Phonics section for more ideas.

• Practise phonemes daily.
• Play games such as pairs, bingo, lotto or any games where your child has to match or find pictures or objects that are the same.
• Use jigsaw puzzles.
• Play memory games such as ‘I went to the shops and I bought a …’.  Increase the amount of objects your child has to remember .
• Break down simple words such as ‘at’ or ‘pen’ into their phonemes.

 

In the Early Years Foundation Stage handwriting is all about developing the children’s fine motor skills.  This means developing the strength and flexibility in their hands and fingers in order to hold and use a pencil correctly.  Once the children have pencil control they will then learn how to form letters correctly and eventually join their writing.

 

There are 2 types of motor skills that your child needs to develop.

 

Firstly gross motor skills which are the large movements which children need to be able to skip, ride a bike, climb and swing.  We have lots of equipment both indoor and outdoor that help your child to improve, for example the climbing frame, hoops, balls, beanbags, ride-ons and skipping ropes. Young children need to develop their gross motor skills including hand and eye co-ordination first.

Secondly fine motor skills enable control of the arm from the elbow down to the wrist, hand and fingers.  Activities such as threading beads, using a screwdriver, moulding playdough, tracing patterns with their fingers all help to develop these skills.

 

There are lots of things that your child does at home that help to develop fine motor skills.  They learn to pick things up off the floor, they learn to put the fork to their mouth, they can fit objects into a space such as putting their toothbrush into the holder.

The Early Learning Goals we are working towards for fine motor skills and handwriting are:

 

• Handle tools, objects, construction and malleable materials safely and with increasing control.
• Use a pencil and hold it effectively to form recognisable letters, most of which are correctly formed.

We provide many opportunities to develop fine and gross motor skills.  We observe the children identifying which hand they prefer though many children have still not decided.  These are some of the activities we do as most things help develop their fine motor skills:
• Painting using fingers and paintbrushes of different sizes and the easels, the playground, the climbing frame and walls.
• Using construction kits to make models.
• Playdough, clay, plasticene using different tools.
• Cutting using scissors.
• Sawing and hammering.
• Pouring water and sand into containers.
• Jigsaws and puzzles.
• Using the mouse and keyboard on the computer.
• Threading beads or pasta, lacing cards.
• Putting pegs onto a washing line or playing with pegs.
• Drawing using different tools such as chalks, pastels, charcoal, pens.
• Tracing over patterns and cards.
• Tracking patterns from left to right.

Once your child is competent at tracing and tracking, they will begin to learn how to form their letters and eventually join them. 

 

It is important that your child learns to hold and form letters the correct way from the beginning as bad habits are difficult to break.  We aim to ensure your child holds a pencil correctly and for some children we use special pencil grips to help with this.

 

• Do lots of the activities from the fine motor list such as threading, lego, k’nnex, cutting and sticking.
• Encourage your child to draw and write.

 

The world of computers is rapidly growing and children need to be computer literate.  We teach your child computer skills regularly and these help with reading, writing and fine motor skills.

 

We have a variety of programmes designed to develop:

• Recognition of phonemes.
• Spelling.
• Reading simple words.
• Using the keyboard to write their own text.
• Matching objects and pictures.
• Joining in with the story.

 

For some children the computer is a great way to learn.  It provides motivation to read and fun at the same time.  However, children also need to do lots of social and practical activities so please try to keep a balance of the time spent on the computer.