Being a Communicator

At Somersham Primary School, we understand that literacy and communication are essential life skills. Through our English curriculum, we enable children to develop their skills and knowledge and to communicate effectively and creatively through spoken and written language.

Reading

We love books and encourage our children to be happy and active readers. Children are immersed in a rich language environment where teachers read to them and with them on a regular basis. All pupils participate in a range of Guided Reading activities within their class, as well as experiencing a range of literature through class shared texts and other reading events. Children practice and learn the active reading skills of: decode, retrieve, interpret, predict, perform, review, viewpoint and choice as they move through the school.

Our school has a bright, cheerful and well-stocked library which is right at the centre of our building. Books are organised using the Accelerated Reader Scheme which allows us to monitor and support all pupils' independent reading.

We ensure that we deliver a broad and balanced curriculum using appropriate resources including texts that we believe champion our curriculum drivers of diversity and our world. These include:

Writing

Writing is an integral part of the whole school curriculum. A wide range of teaching strategies (such as talk for writing and sentence staking), cross-curricular stimuli, purposes and audiences are explored across the school to support children's writing.

Phonics

We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised complete systematic synthetic phonics programme (SSP).  Phonics is taught daily in structured sessions in Reception and Key Stage One. Learning is then revisited within independent activities throughout the week. Once children have a good grasp of phonics, they move on to learning other spelling rules.

Grammar, Spelling and Handwriting

Grammar, handwriting and spelling are taught independently as well as being embedded in all literacy lessons, so that children are able to use them as tools to help them write effectively.