English
Phonics in EYFS & KS1
At the Husthwaite and Sessay Primary Federation, we follow the Phonics Letters and Sounds programme. This is a phonics resource published by the Department for Education and Skills, which consists of six phases. Discreet phonics sessions are taught daily and are fun and multi-sensory to appeal to all learning styles. We use actions, songs and a range of games to help the children learn the first 42 sounds in EYFS and Year 1. In Year 2 children move towards learning spellings and spelling patterns.
To support early reading development, we support our phonics programme with a range of early reading books. These reading books are phonetically decodable and allow children to practise the skills for early reading. Children have regular, discrete reading sessions in school and opportunities to take phonetic reading books home on a daily basis are promoted within school.
Reading
Learning to read fluently is a fundamental part of a child’s education in order to confidently access all areas of learning and prepare them for the next stage in their life.
Reading is given high status at the Husthwaite and Sessay Primary Federation and is at the heart of everything that we do. We aim to teach the children the skills to enable them to read well but also aim to instil in them a love of reading and a passion for exploring a range of books. Both schools actively use their school libraries.
KS1 and KS2 share and read whole-class texts (fiction and non-fiction) that are linked to our Curriculum themes that not only promote a love and engagement in reading but the design of our reading curriculum means that pupils are immersed in the necessary vocabulary and grammar before they even begin to write. This is reinforced by discrete reading sessions in class.
Writing
Shared and modelled writing takes place within English and also topic lessons for cross-curricular writing. This allows the teacher to demonstrate high expectations and covers the success criteria they would expect to see in children’s writing. Children are given extended opportunities to write frequently in a range of forms and the curriculum is designed to provide real purpose experiences to promote cross-curricular writing.
Within the English curriculum, children have regular dedicated time to be taught spelling, punctuation and grammar rules (SPAG). As well as regular handwriting sessions, which enhance children’s ability to produce ‘published’ pieces of writing.
For more information about the teaching and learning of English, please contact our English Leader, Miss Goodchild (Husthwaite) / Mrs Wells (Sessay), via the School Office.
Useful Links for Parents
Please find below helpful website links that can support Maths learning at home:
https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/
http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/
Library
Husthwaite School has a superb purpose built library, housed on two floors. It contains a wide range of fiction and non fiction texts. All children have access to the library for reading and lending use.
Mathematics
At the Husthwaite and Sessay Primary Federation we believe a high-quality Mathematics education not only develops fluency but gives opportunities for reasoning and problem solving. We aspire for all children to reach the expected level for their year group, providing children with additional high-quality interventions to maintain this, if required.
Maths is taught at the Husthwaite and Sessay Primary Federation using the ‘Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract’ (CPA) approach.
CONCRETE:
Pupils have the opportunity to handle physical objects to help them understand what they are doing – the ‘doing’ stage.
PICTORIAL:
Pupils will then build on this concrete approach by using pictorial representations. These can then be used to reason and solve problems, through looking at and drawing pictures to represent the problem – the ‘seeing’ stage.
ABSTRACT:
With the foundations firmly laid, pupils should be able to move to an abstract approach using numbers and key concepts with confidence. For examples of this approach please see our calculations policy – the ‘symbolic’ stage.
For more information about the teaching and learning of Maths, please contact our Maths Leaders, Mr Chapman (Husthwaite) / Mrs Sowray (Sessay), via the School Office.
Useful Links for Parents
Please find below helpful website links that can support Maths learning at home:
Times Tables https://www.ttrockstars.com/