Our School

Through our English Curriculum, we strive to teach the children how important their reading, writing, speaking and listening skills will be in the real world; whether that be enjoying a fabulous book, reading a toy instruction pamphlet, performing in a play or class assembly, or writing a letter to grandparents. We have created a curriculum that encourages enthusiasm and engagement with English and provides our children with rich and varied learning opportunities that help them to become confident and enthusiastic learners.

English learning brings together phonics, reading, writing, handwriting, speaking and listening and is taught through a rich programme of learning activities. These are often linked to topic work but not always. We aim to incorporate as many ‘real’ reasons for writing as we can, to motivate and engage the children.

Alongside a daily English lesson, the children have additional time each day to listen to a story and read quietly alone or with a friend.

Reading

Books not only enrich the minds of children; they also help them relax and enjoy some precious calm
moments. Reading is a vital skill at every stage of school life and beyond. Every staff member at North Mundham Primary understands the importance of reading and is committed to promoting a love of reading from the very first day children start at the school. Reading not only allows children to access all areas of the curriculum it also enables them to transport themselves to different continents, worlds and lives.

At North Mundham we know that this is a key area for families and school to work together. We set high expectations of reading every day -home and school – and use our School Diary as a running record, which we encourage parents to write in and sign.

We teach reading in a variety of ways at North Mundham Primary School; this includes phonics teaching, reading carousel activities,1 to 1 reading and whole class reading.

As a school, we follow the phonics-based programme called ‘Read, Write, Inc’ produced by Ruth Miskin.

In Reception, the children participate in daily RWI sessions. The children are introduced to the sounds of the alphabet and learn to blend the sounds together to read words. We encourage parents to read with their child and to recognise the importance of reading to their child on a daily basis to promote an enjoyment and love of reading.

In Key Stage 1 daily RWI lessons are timetabled. In these sessions, the children look at a range of sounds across the week. This includes nonsense words, real words and common exception words. In accordance with the RWI programme, the children read ‘ditty books’ with the relevant sounds covered in their set.

The school has a fiction and non-fiction library and a wide variety of reading scheme books. Reading for pleasure is strong in our school. During the year there are additional activities such as writing competitions, meeting authors, writing poetry ‘by the canal’ and reading challenges -participation is high from all groups of pupils.

All year groups take books home to share, to practice and enjoy. Initially the reading books are from one of the several reading schemes: Rigby Star and Rigby Rocket, Collins Big Cat, Nelson and Ginn. They are colour coded by reading age, so that the children experience a wide range of styles and genre from the very beginning.

We want children to enjoy reading and have an element of choice in what they read. Choosing a book is a special time. Early readers choose an additional book from the picture book library. Once children are able to read more independently, they choose from the library or from books they have at home. Staff discuss and guide their choices to ensure success, enjoyment and development. Teachers will monitor the books children are reading and how well they are getting through a book.

Core texts for guided reading lessons are chosen carefully for each class. They are used to inspire, amaze and enjoy. The texts are often linked to topics and themes or author visits. Teachers use the texts to develop a love and excitement of reading, to encourage children to extend their vocabulary, retrieve information, develop skills of discussion and inference and to talk about storyline and author choice (words, sentence types, characterisation…). Children are read to daily and sometimes these core texts are used. At North Mundham, children are exposed to a wide range of highquality authors, rich text types and styles allowing children access to books which may be above their reading level.

Writing

We strive for children to enjoy the process of writing and sharing their writing to others. Lessons encourage children to play with words, have a go freely, spell carefully, edit thoughtfully and share enthusiastically. We teach through high quality modelling of good examples followed by the children having a go and seeing that they can be successful writers. Lessons involve learning the elements of spelling, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary. We want the children to write with good sentence structure, exciting vocabulary and gain a sense of pride in what they can do as they journey through the school. Structured writing is followed by independent writing where each child has the chance to show
off what they have learnt.

We use ‘The Write Stuff’(Jane Considine) units of work twice a term, alongside work planned by the teacher, inspired by a book, a film clip, topic, a trip or world event.

We teach children the mechanics of handwriting using the Letter-join scheme. Children will begin by developing writing skills with pre-cursive patterns leading to accomplished handwriting that shows a neat cursive script. We are looking for quality, speed and stamina in handwriting, allowing children to write for longer and produce handwriting that is legible and consistently of a high standard.

At North Mundham we believe that mathematical learning should combine developing a thorough and clear understanding of concepts with the ability to reason and apply in problem solving situations and investigations.

Mathematical understanding is underpinned by the use of visual and kinaesthetic strategies which thoroughly embed concepts, enabling the children to make links with and build on previous learning.

Whilst working towards efficiency in calculation, we believe that it is important for children to understand what they are doing rather than simply following a method. Using this conceptual first approach means that children are better able to identify errors in their working out. The children will learn using the concrete, pictorial abstract approach. This can be seen in our calculation policy.

Through investigative activities, children develop strategies for solving problems and how to reason and implement their core knowledge effectively

Wherever possible, mathematical learning culminates with a practical application which demonstrates the relevance of maths in our everyday lives.

We have developed a system of Key Instant Recall Facts (KIRFs) that encourage the children to learn age appropriate skills that will support their curriculum learning. This allows us to communicate effectively around core skills that parents can support their children with each half term.

We ensure that the children receive a varied diet of mathematical input. This can include a formal lesson; a maths meeting to revise key concepts or revisit current learning objectives through a variety of methods including daily practice, singing and games; an opportunity to explore our own mathematical understanding and stretch ourselves through independent thought in ‘goal free; sessions and the opportunity to develop KIRF knowledge.

The curriculum we use is the White Rose Maths Curriculum and we follow the planning units you can find attached below. White Rose hopes to achieve the following:

We want pupils to become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, to be able to reason and to solve problems. Our curriculum embraces these National Curriculum aims, and provides guidance to help pupils to become:

Visualisers – we use the CPA approach to help pupils understand mathematics and to make connections between different representations.

Describers – we place great emphasis on mathematical language and questioning so pupils can discuss the mathematics they are doing, and so support them to take ideas further.

Experimenters – as well as being fluent mathematicians, we want pupils to love and learn more about mathematics.

We firmly believe that children should enjoy mathematics and should have opportunities to succeed. We feel at North Mundham we want to equip children to succeed in life, nurture a love of exploration and create quizzical problem solvers who can reason as to why they are making choices.