English

English is delivered daily. Students are assessed against the reading, speaking and listening and writing bands of the SEN toolkit curriculum through Classroom Monitor. The curriculum delivery is supported by the use of Hero Academy Oxford reading books and Education City, an online tool to support students through assigned tasks mapped to the curriculum.

Writing

A dedicated therapy team support our children to develop their fine motor skills when they pick up writing tools and make marks on paper. They do this by giving children plenty of opportunities to connect dots, stay in lines, draw etc. 

Handwriting needs to be taught in a consistent way and it is important for children to develop good habits with writing, ensuring they are using the correct pencil grip, they are sitting in the correct position, their letters are formed correctly and consistently sized.

Structuring sentences is supported through a program called colourful semantics which allows students to visualise a sentence, at their level, and develop their ability to progress to more complex sentences.

Phonics

Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing of the English language by developing learners’ awareness of the sounds within a word (phonemes). The aim is for children to gain an understanding of the correspondence between the sounds and the different spelling patterns linked with each sound.

Learning to read is one of the most important things your child will learn at our school. We put as much energy as we possibly can into making sure that every single child learns to read as quickly as possible. Part of learning to read is having good knowledge of phonics.

We teach the children simple ways of remembering these sounds and letters.