English

Reading is an extremely important element of education and should be encountered every day. At Knowsley Central School, we appreciate that each child is different and therefore different approaches need to be employed to ensure all children have access to reading opportunities.  Where appropriate we follow Twinkl Phonics scheme to teach pupils letters and sounds.  Phonics is taught on a 1:1 basis or in small groups and staff incorporate a variety of teaching methods to support pupils reading.  For children at the pre-reading stage, play and sensory based activities are incorporated into teaching to help support early reading skills. At this emergent literacy stage, children begin developing initial skills that support reading such as sound discrimination, phonological awareness, letter knowledge, awareness of print, and early writing.  For those children who can, independent reading is completed on a daily basis and children follow the Oxford Reading Tree Scheme. Where we feel children need a little more help with their reading we use Thriving Reading to offer further support. Throughout school, reading is supported in a variety of ways including sensory stories, story sacks, colourful semantics and Blank Level questioning.

For children at the earliest stage of writing, sensory mark making provides them with opportunities to be able to explore form, pattern, line and tracking. It enables children to develop the early skills of moving from left to right, associating own movements to marks made. Children also take part in Dough Disco on a daily basis to help improve fine motor skills.  As they develop mark making becomes more purposeful and allows children a wealth of opportunities to investigate writing for a purpose, developing control in using tools and creating marks such as vertical, horizontal patterns and simple shapes. We promote and encourage pupils in the early acquisition of these skills through dedicated mark making areas within each classroom. Writing and mark making is also celebrated across the school with teachers encouraged to use pupils own writing and mark making on display where possible. We have a well-structured progressive handwriting programme focusing on the whole child, their needs and abilities. With specialist support and provision, pupils’ experience a multi-sensory, holistic approach to develop fine and gross motor skills on a daily basis, supporting the development of future pencil grasps when the pupil is ready. All pupils have access to Finger Gyms which were designed in collaboration with an Occupational Therapist to improve fine motor skills.