English
At Coteford Infant School, we believe that a love of reading is the foundation for becoming confident and capable writers. Our aim is to create an environment where children are immersed in books and stories, where reading is enjoyable, and where children are inspired to read for both pleasure and purpose. We strive to model a culture where adults actively enjoy reading, demonstrating its value in everyday life.
We recognise the importance of oracy — the ability to express ideas and thoughts clearly through spoken language — as a crucial step towards becoming successful readers and writers. We provide rich opportunities for children to develop their speaking and listening skills through storytelling, discussions, and role-play. By encouraging children to articulate their thoughts, retell events, and share ideas, we ensure they have a strong foundation for developing their writing skills.
We value mark-making from the earliest stages and nurture children’s development towards becoming fluent, confident writers with stamina and a positive “can do” attitude. We know that making mistakes is an essential part of learning, and we encourage children to use these moments as opportunities for growth and resilience in their writing journey.
We understand that children write best when they have something meaningful to write about. Therefore, we provide a range of rich, practical experiences, outings, and shared events to inspire their imagination and generate ideas for writing. Alongside this, we believe that exposing children to high-quality texts and vocabulary around a topic significantly enhances their language and writing development.
Our teaching is carefully structured to balance creativity with core literacy skills. Using the National Curriculum and EYFS framework, teachers plan lessons that develop reading, writing, and spoken language, ensuring all children are appropriately supported and challenged. The delivery of the English curriculum is structured and progressive, and yet open to flexibility and flair. Children are assessed consistently across the school. There is a rigorous programme of monitoring, feedback, and in-house training in key areas of the English curriculum.
We use the Read Write Inc. programme to teach early reading and writing, but literacy opportunities are intentionally woven throughout the curriculum to ensure learning is meaningful and cross-curricular.
We strongly believe that children who read regularly and are encouraged to articulate their ideas with confidence perform better throughout their school journey. Therefore, we actively promote a strong home-school partnership, encouraging parents to support daily reading, writing, and speaking activities. Together, we aim to equip every child with the knowledge, skills, and passion to become confident speakers, enthusiastic readers, and capable writers, setting them up for lifelong success.
English Progression of skills
Phonics and Early Reading
To find out more Information about how we teach phonics using Read write Inc please click the link below
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Oracy
What is Oracy?
Oracy is the ability to articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage with others through spoken language. At Coteford Infant School, we believe spoken language to be essential to the well being, development and achievement of our children across the curriculum.
In school, oracy is a powerful tool for learning; by teaching children to become more effective speakers and listeners we empower them to better understand themselves, each other and the world around them.
At Coteford Infant School, everyone is respected, included and each voice is valued. We will support every member of our school to have the confidence and emotional intelligence to communicate effectively, build positive relationships and prepare for their next steps in life.
Not only do we feel it is important to teach children to learn to talk, we also believe that children learn most effectively through talk. We encourage talk in all our lessons to allow children to collaboratively discuss ideas, thoughts and judgements. Children take responsibility for their own learning through talk and discover new information in pairs, trios, circles, and a variety of other groupings.
What are the benefits of an Oracy education?
Oracy increases confidence, empowering children with the belief that their voice has value, developing the ability to articulate thoughts so others will listen. Research has shown that structured talk in class benefits children’s confidence and self-esteem.
Oracy improves academic outcomes, developing learners who can think critically, reason together and have the vocabulary to express their knowledge and understanding.
Oracy Fosters well-being, supporting children to build successful relationships, talk through issues, express feelings and resolve conflicts. The fact that well-being is supported by talk, whether that’s talking through a problem with a friend, or using talk to build strong relationships in the first place, is well supported by the research literature.
Oracy equips students to thrive in life beyond school helping them to progress, access employment and engage in civic life. Discussion and debate are central to democratic life – the oracy skills needed to discuss complex or emotive issues with honesty and compassion are crucial. Oracy is also important for children to thrive in employment, with businesses frequently emphasising the value of teamwork and communication skills.
Through a high quality oracy education students learn through talk and to talk. This is when they develop and deepen their subject knowledge and understanding through talk in the classroom, which has been planned, designed, modelled, scaffolded and structured to enable them to learn the skills needed to talk effectively.
Talking Guidelines
All classes have agreed on their Talking Guidelines‘ which sets out how everyone in the class (including the adults) will work together to ensure that everyone has a voice and that their contributions are valued
