Curriculum Evening for New Parents



Curriculum Evening for New Parents

Communication, Language and Literacy

Intro

different subjects in the Foundation Curriculum than in the National curriculum

One of the 6 areas - the one I’ll be talking about - is CLL.

That first word - Communication - is vital. In Reception we will be teaching your child to read, to write, and also to improve their speaking and listening skills.

Speaking and listening

You might think “my child doesn’t need to be taught to speak. The problem is getting them to be quiet.” But there are actually a lot of skills that we hope to develop in your child’s first year at school.

Listening:

We teach children the kind of behaviours that a good listener shows, so that we know they are listening

Sitting still

Sitting quietly

Looking at the person who’s talking

Trying to remember what the speaker said

Not interrupting

How?

Carpet sessions - gradually increasing time on carpet

Circle games eg talking teddy

Music - copy patterns

Speaking:

Lots of skills that we develop in children. The Foundation Stage curriculum is a play based curriculum, and there’s a lot of research to show that the language that children use in play is far richer than that they use in more formal situations.

Use language to imagine and recreate roles and experiences: role play area, small world play, puppets, garden

Extending their vocabulary

Being able to control their voice: loud enough to be heard in whole class situations, leaving playground voices outside etc

Using talk to organise, explain and clarify their ideas and feelings.

Being able to use language to ask for what they want and need, and to ask by talking in complete sentences.

Making up songs, rhymes and stories

Speaking and listening: How can your help your child?

Above all by talking to them. Make sure that that you have some time every day when the television and the radio are switched off and you just talk. It might be when you sit around the table and have dinner together and chat about your day. You might get the lego out and talk about the model you are making together. You might get out the Barbies or Bratz or Power Rangers and enjoy some pretend play.

Whatever suits you. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s a conversation. Sometimes we’re so busy that communication ends up turning into a list of instructions, but it’s so important that we find time to talk to our children rather than just talking at them.

Specific skills - look at you to show they’re listening

- quiet reminders not to shout

- reminders not to interrupt.

Reading

Reassurance:

I’ll be talking about what the children will be learning in their first year of school, but please don’t worry if you feel that your child can’t do all these things.

Children come into Reception with very different levels of understanding and achievement:

Gender/Previous experience/Age

Children develop at different rates. They may appear to make no progress for some time, then things will suddenly begin to click, and they can make rapid progress. After a while this progress is likely to plateau out as children consolidate their learning.

Some children will be confident readers by the end of their Reception year. Others will just be beginning to read independently. Others may not be reading at all, but will be ready to take off when they go into Year 1.

Sometimes, particularly if it’s your first or only child starting school, you may not be sure if your child is doing OK. If you ever have any worries, then do talk to your child’s class teacher and ask if she has any concerns - 9 times out of 10 they will be able to reassure you that your child is doing just fine.

But try not to let your child know that you’re worried. Children tend to be a lot more relaxed about these things than parents. And that’s how we want it to stay. Anxious children to find it harder to learn. Happy, confident children make the best learners.

4 main skills and attitudes that we want children to develop:

1. Love of books

There is no point teaching children to read if they never want to pick up a book. This is one most enjoyable ways that you can help your child. Try to read a bedtime story every evening and make that story time a special, calm, cosy time.

Even when your child is a fluent reader, carry on reading to them.

Show Reading record and suggest how to complete it

Seeing you reading - modelling how enjoyable and useful reading is

2. Knowing how books work (demonstrate with big book)

1. Start at front cover not back cover

2. Which way up a book goes

3. Picture on front cover gives us a clue as to what the book will be about. (helps when children are choosing a book). Knowing that there are different kinds of books (stories, nursery rhymes, poems, non-fiction, dictionaries, atlases)

4. Knowing that we get information from both pictures and text - discuss pictures, understanding that when somebody is reading they are getting interpreting those black squiggles

5. Text goes from left to right

6. Discuss characters eg how do they feel, what kind of person are they?

7. Predict what will happen next

8. Being able to express preferences - favourite part of a story, which characters they liked or disliked, why they found a story funny or exciting or boring

3. Letter recognition

Children need to know what sounds are usually made be different letter shapes. We teach children to recognise the 26 letters of the alphabet, but also some digraphs (2 letters/1 sound eg “ch” and “ee”)

We teach this using a scheme called Jolly Phonics which is a fantastic scheme. Young children learn best when they are active and using all their senses. To help children remember the sound that is usually made by each letter shape we tell them a simple story, teach an action and re-enforce with fun songs.

Demonstrate: Jolly Phonics big book

Flash cards (with and without picture clues)

CD

Show JP leaflet that we will be sending home.

Classroom: whole class teaching sessions

Use of ICT

Games eg fishing games, matching letter shape and picture etc

Teaching at a fast pace - approximately 4 sounds a week.

4 Phonic Skills

Children need to be able to blend - put sounds together to make words

Some children, especially oldest ones, come to school already able to do this, but most find it very difficult. It takes lots and lots of practice.

Even before the children know what sounds are made by different letter shapes, we can play games to develop their blending skills:

Simon Says

Robot voice (show CVC picture cards)

Objects on table - point to what I’m saying (robot voice)

Both the JP and Letters and Sounds scheme have been designed so that as soon as children have learned the first set of words they can begin to read simple words.

Write word on whiteboard - show how to sound out

Magnetic letters on whiteboard - show how to sound out

Fishing game

Match words and pictures

Simple reading board games

Reading development

9. Child can’t hear word when sounded out

10. Child can hear word if adult sounds out (often too slow when sounding out themselves)

11. Child can sound word out independently

12. Blending has become so fast and automatic that a child looks at a word and says it straight away. They “know” what it says

Helping your child:

Letter sounds, not names

Pure sound, no “uh” on the end (example - sounding out “but”)

Tricky Words

Very few words in the English language are completely irregular, but we have a such a complex phonetic system that many words aren’t decodable when children are at the early stages of reading.

Later in the year we will be sending words home with the children. These will be a mixture of common, regular words which will help children to develop their blending skills and also useful “tricky” words such as “the” and “do”. When children are learning to read these tricky words, it helps to look at the regular part, the letters that make the sounds we would expect and then to look at the tricky bit.

Writing

3 main skills/attitudes:

Letter formation

13. Fine motor skills - not all children ready when they begin school (give examples of activities)

14. Gross motor skills - strength in shoulder (give examples of activities)

15. Hold pencil correctly - demonstrate

16. Start the letter in the correct place

17. Go round the letter in the right direction

At this time of the year, the children will be practising the correct formation of the letters in their name, but generally we will be concentrating on developing their letter recognition, phonic awareness and the motor skills that they need in order to form letters correctly.

Later in the year we’ll teach the children how to form their letters correctly and at that point we’ll send home some simple sheets so that you know how the children have been taught to write their letters and so that you can help them to practise at home.

Understanding how to write a sentence - (demonstrate shared writing)

In the same way that the shared reading of big books demonstrates how reading works, shared writing shows children how writing works.

There are many skills involved that we take for granted because we have been doing it for so long. But for the children it’s all new, and there’s a lot to learn:

18. Deciding what I want to say before I begin to write

19. Where to start writing

20. Remember what first word was - listen for sounds in the word, is it a word I already know?

21. Leave a space before I begin to write the next word, otherwise it will look like one big long word and nobody will be able to read it

22. Say the sentence again - remember what I’ve already written, decide what is the next word is, listen for the sounds again

23. Where to go when you reach the end of the line

24. Read the whole sentence. Did it make sense? Did I miss any words out? Put a full stop at the end.

Seeing themselves as writers

We want children to be able to write for a variety of purposes

I Functional writing: lists, letters, signs

How can you help?

Letting the children see you write (shopping list, note to daddy to tell him that you’ve gone round to see a friend, post it note on the fridge to buy more milk)

Pointing out environmental print

II Imaginative writing - stories, poems and songs. We want children to become imaginative storytellers and eventually - maybe not in Reception, but as they progress through the school - imaginative story writers.

This is where imaginative play and sharing stories are invaluable.

Children can’t write stories if they don’t hear stories.

The more stories that children hear, then the more story book language they absorb - especially from traditional tales - phrases such as “once upon a time”, “happily ever after” and expressions such as “burst into tears” instead of just “cried”.

Through hearing lots of stories, children become aware of the different kinds of characters that you meet in a story, and of the kinds of adventures and misadventure that characters have.

Children soak up this knowledge and use the words and ideas that they’ve heard in stories, as well as their own personal experiences, when they begin to create stories themselves.

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