Mathematics
At St Elphin’s we offer our children a high-quality mathematics education that nurtures enjoyment and curiosity around the subject while developing an understanding of the world that we live in. As a staff, we establish a positive learning environment which focuses on fluency, problem solving and reasoning in varied, engaging and exciting ways. This in turn enables our children to become fluent in fundamental maths, whilst ensuring varied and frequent practice of solving increasingly challenging and complex problems to develop their conceptual understanding.
Reading
At St. Elphin’s reading is at the heart of the curriculum. Our aim is to teach children to become confident and competent readers by learning how to read and by developing comprehension skills which they can apply across the curriculum, as well as developing a life-long love of reading for pleasure. Parents are actively encouraged to be involved in their child’s reading journey throughout their time at school.
At St. Elphin’s we teach reading through a mixture of whole class, small group and individual reading opportunities. We use a range of books, covering different genres. This ensures that we have depth and breadth within each level. We use Floppy’s Phonics Decodable books in EYFS and KS1. In KS2 we use a range of books and texts to support the development of the children’s reading skills.
At St. Elphin’s a love of reading is nurtured from the start of the children’s journey in school, with a focus on exploring and enjoying a variety of stories, poems and non-fiction texts. Alongside this, in EYFS, the children begin a programme of systematic, synthetic phonics. The children experience a very interactive, multi-sensory approach to the teaching of synthetic phonics following the ‘Floppy’s Phonics’ programme. This programme incorporates a methodical approach of revisit and review, teach, practise and apply. The children work through the phases progressively and at a pace which fully embeds their learning.
Reading Widely
Opportunities to develop a love of reading are planned into the curriculum. These include books linked to topics, the use of quality texts in English, daily shared reading time, as well as a regular book swap. Fund-raising opportunities are under way to develop a school library!
To ensure that our children are given a broad and balanced English curriculum and develop a love of reading, we have a structured approach to the teaching of reading. Reading is sequenced across school so the children can develop the reading skills they need to become competent and enthusiastic readers. You can find out more about reading in each year group by looking at the reading sequence document below.
Systematic, Synthetic Phonics (SSP)
Writing
At St Elphin’s Primary School, we use writing from across the curriculum to assess where children are working at in writing. As a picture of the child as a writer is gradually built up across the year, gaps in learning can clearly be seen and most importantly they can be addressed. Key Performance Indicators are used to show the key features expected in a child’s writing according to their year group. Teachers use the document from their current year group as well as ensure that they are clear as to what has been taught previously so that all learning is constantly reinforced and re-taught. This will enable us to ensure that children reach the end of Y6 with the knowledge and skills needed to achieve age related expectations.