Old Town Infant School and Nursery
Part of Coastal Learning Partnership
Early Reading
An enjoyment of reading, sharing picture books, songs, rhymes and stories and being read to out loud is one of the most important experiences children should have in their early childhood.
Nurturing a love of reading from a young age builds the foundations for your child’s development, giving them a head start in their learning journey. Reading makes up a fundamental part of language development in early childhood as it helps children to understand words and is crucial for speech development.
At Old Town Infant School and Nursery we put a huge emphasis on developing a love for reading. In nursery you will find children looking at books, re-telling and acting out familiar stories and asking grown-ups to read to them. We sing songs and rhymes daily, sit together for a shared story twice a day and make sure that we visit our fantastic school library twice a week!
The following links give more information about the importance of reading with your child:
https://www.booktrust.org.uk/books-and-reading/tips-and-advice/reading-tips/
https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/what-we-do/coronavirus-information-advice/reading-with-your-child
Phase 1 Phonics
At Old Town Infant School and Nursery we believe that reading gives children the tools to become independent life-long learners. Reading is at the core of our teaching and learning and when teaching children phonics, we are teaching the stepping stones to becoming successful, independent readers.
All children in nursery have a weekly Phase 1 phonics session. These sessions develop their speaking and listening skills and lay the foundations for using letter sounds to blend and segment. Phase 1 is all about listening to sounds and learning to discriminate between different sounds which is essential for all the phonics teaching that follows. If children can’t hear sounds and differentiate between them then they will struggle to understand that words are ‘built up’ of sounds and that each sound is represented by a different letter or group of letters.
More information can be found at:
For more information about how you can support your child at home, please click on the following links:
https://letters-and-sounds.com/phase-1/