EYFS
During their first year at school our children continue to follow the ‘Foundation Stage’ curriculum which comprises seven areas of learning – three ‘Prime’ areas and four ‘Specific’ areas.
Prime Areas:
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Communication and Language
• Physical Development
Specific Areas:
• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design
Teaching and learning is designed to be multi-sensory and engage children in fun and stimulating activities across all of the areas above, making use of our inspiring outdoor areas as well as the classrooms. Our children’s learning is recorded in two “Learning Journeys’: the Online Learning Journey ‘Tapestry’ and in a scrap-book type learning journey in school. Staff and parents observe and support the learning of pupils through photographs, drawings and mark making/writing presented in these Learning Journeys.
Phonics at MFL
The teaching of reading uses a range of strategies, with phonics playing a key role in this.
Synthetic phonics is the primary approach used in reading for children in early school life. Phonics provides pupils with the tools to decode words when reading and to segment words for writing and spelling. Using phonics to read enables children to explore literacy, develop their vocabulary, learn across the curriculum from many sources, enter imaginary worlds and to answer their many questions.
An amalgamation of the most effective elements from Jolly Phonics, Letters and Sounds and Read Write Inc. methodology are combined to create a clear and engaging Mountfields Lodge Phonics curriculum. This combination of programmes gives each individual phoneme/grapheme a clear identity; allows children to build up a large bank of sight words and equips them with the skills to blend and segment.
Phonics is taught daily for approximately 20 minutes.
Teaching
Characteristics of successful phonics teaching:
- Rigorous and fast paced
- Highly interactive
- Many opportunities to articulate phonemes/words
- All children blending orally and visually (with and without use of sound buttons)
- All children segmenting orally and segmenting for spelling
- Teacher modelling correct pronunciation and technical language
- High expectations for all pupils
- New learning in each session
- Praise and reinforcement
- 4 part structure – Review, teach, practise and apply
Should you require any further information about ‘Our Curriculum to Inspire at MfL’, please do not hesitate to contact Mrs Mock or Mr Coleman via the school office.