At Hurst Green Primary School and Nursery we endeavour to provide an engaging and stimulating curriculum for English, thus enabling pupils to reach their optimum potential, both in attainment and development.

The English programme of study includes a continued emphasis on phonics, which is taught through a high quality systematic approach. Through a solid underpinning of phonics, pupils are able to access all areas of the curriculum, involving reading and writing.

At Hurst Green Primary School and Nursery, we believe that reading for pleasure is vitally important to develop a lifelong appreciation and love of literature. Here, we have high expectations that pupils will be encouraged to read at home on a daily basis. Quality and choice of texts are important to promote enjoyment. Pupils are taught and encouraged to develop comprehension skills, to explore different times and cultures and a variety of genres.

Curriculum guidelines emphasise the importance of pupils’ having a sound knowledge of grammar throughout the different Key Stages. From Key Stage One  pupils are taught the grammatical terms and will develop correct grammatical vocabulary.

High expectations are shared with children so that they become really confident in the use of grammar, punctuation and spelling.

How do children learn phonics at Hurst Green?

Children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 have short, structured phonics lessons lastly approximately 15 minutes each day.  We follow the Government’s ‘Letters and Sounds’ programme for teaching synthetic phonics, which has 6 different phases.
Generally:

• Nursery and Reception children cover Phases 1-3 of the programme;
• Year 1 children cover 3-5; and
• In Year 2 and beyond, children finish Phase 6 and move on to ‘Support for Spelling’ in KS2.

However, all children are different and we assess children regularly to see which phase they should be taught.  This may mean that they are taught by different teachers with a different group of children on some days to ensure their needs are being met and are being suitably challenged.

We use a variety of reading schemes including Project X to ensure that children read a range of different texts.