Communication and Language, & Literacy Policy

Written and amended by Laura Dolby – February 2018Adopted by Governor -

Every child has the right to an education that develops their talents. This education must nurture a child’s respect for themselves, others and their environment.

(UNCRC. Article 29)

Development Matters in The Early years Foundation Stage documentation states that…

‘Children are born ready and eager to learn, they actively reach out to engage with other people, and in the world around them. Development is not an automatic process; however it depends on each unique

child having opportunities to interact in positive relationships and enabling environments.’

We aim to create an enthusiasm for all aspects of Communication, Language and Literacy, in all its forms, from being motivated to share stories and wanting to explore emergent writing opportunities, to having the confidence to talk and become a purposeful communicator. We aim to create motivating learning experiences that support and extend children’s language skills such as singing, imaginative role play, talking times, storytelling, and opportunities for detailed discussions through the Aspiration Group. All areas of Communication, Language and Literacy will be taught in a creative and imaginative way to stimulate and motivate the children to want to learn and hopefully inspire them to have the confidence to want to share their language with us.

As a school which places the rights of children at the centre of everything it does, we spend a great deal of time respecting the needs of every individual child in school – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Each curriculum area is taught with the needs of every child at its core and all practitioners in school acknowledge the responsibility they have to provide a curriculum that is creative and stimulating. This curriculum nurtures all children and allows them to be successful and proud in all of their achievements.

Laura is a qualified Early Language Lead Practitioner who has become a specialist through the Every Child a Talker programme. She has achieved a level 3 OCN in this area and has worked closely alongside qualified speech therapists to support and understand the early development of language, in particular talk. This has enabled her to develop her skills and knowledge to enhance her literacy teaching further and to then disseminate this knowledge into the team and the nursery families; through sharing information, role modelling, training opportunities and initiating new learning opportunities to promote all children achieving in their talk. We currently have a second Nursery Practitioner who is about to do her ECAT training to enable her to support the ECAT coordinator, and provide individual focused learning to children that need specific language support.

The ECAT coordinator works very closely with the Speech and Language team that come into school to engage with those children that need support with their talking skills. These children are closely monitored through the ECAT data system and where necessary the ECAT coordinator identifies children that need a referral and supports the family in this process.

The school has 2 team members that are Ferre Laever’s trained, this training was linked to the Leuven University of Belgium, led by Professor Ferre Laevers and the Early Excellence centre. The 2 trained team members successfully disseminated their knowledge and skills to the whole nursery team and continue to inspire students and visitors that are interested in Ferre Laever’s and his approach to assessment.

Ferre Laever’s approach focuses on detailed assessment techniques that look at children’s well being and involvement. All children are now assessed on entry to school (after their first half term) and where extra support is needed in either areas, they are set specific targets to help them to achieve. Some of these targets may well be linked to literacy support, particularly talking groups, and this will be another way of monitoring their progress alongside the ECAT data and the nursery’s assessment and tracking systems. All team members are involved in this process and are responsible for communicating and monitoring different children’s targets to ensure they are being supported. For more information on this please see the Ferre Laever’s Policy.

All literacy provision is child centred and has its foundations in play and first hand experiences. All practitioners ensure that a broad range of literacy activities are always available, and are presented in creative and imaginative ways that promote a desire for children to want to engage and interact with them. Through these activities children are encouraged to engage in an enriching Communication, Language and Literacy Curriculum, interacting and learning at their own level, nurturing and developing confidences and a love and enthusiasm for language in all its forms - non verbal, spoken, written and read. Literacy is promoted and developed both within the indoor and the outdoor learning environments and different areas have been specifically created to support and extend their learning. We now have a wide range of Communication Friendly spaces both in the indoors and the outdoors that are aimed at encouraging children to engage in talking with each other or using a space for reflection and quiet as a means to escape the busy and noisy nursery environment. The literacy curriculum is developed extensively in the Communication, Language and Literacy area. Here the children are encouraged to emergently write using a wide range of stimulating activities that promote their emergent writing skills. This can range from a variety of media ie pencils, graphite sticks and charcoal as well as trays of tactile materials such as glitter and sand for exploration with fingers and hands. Other areas also compliment this well, including the water play, malleable area and daily play dough availability, where a wide range of tactile materials are provided, encourage sensory exploration with hands, to develop children’s muscles through squeezing, poking pressing, mark making and finger gym exploration. Children are encouraged to make marks outside with different materials such as; chalks, sticks in the mud, paintbrushes and water, writing on iced up windows, mark making in the sand pit, signing in to the bike track. These opportunities promote a real diversity for developing children’s emergent writing skills in ways that appeal to every child inclusively.

The Maisy and Daisy story group children now enjoy engaging in a weekly dough disco session to continue to extend their physical dexterity, strengthening the muscles and movements in their hands and making key connections with their brains that will gradually impact on the control that they have in their emergent writing explorations. Children’s hand grips are monitored and those that have an immature, or awkward grip, will be noted and fed into dough disco and given malleable activity explorations to strengthen their hand muscles further; which in turn will enable them to be able to successfully develop and extend their pencil control further. Without this strength it is impossible for children to be able to achieve this. Families of these children are also supported, and a range of finger gym opportunities to explore together

at home are shared, to provide an appropriate continuity of development for their children and an understanding for the important link between muscle strength and control.

We have used our Iris recording system to record the Literacy Coordinator role modelling a dough disco session with a group of children. This is to be used as a reflection and assessment tool for the Practitioner, as well as a teaching tool for other Team members and students working within the nursery. Iris can be used beyond this as a teaching tool within the Teaching School Alliance, where we feel this is relevant. Iris has been used to record other Literacy initiatives, including Roly Poly Friday, Squiggle Wiggle Disco and Extended sentence building. Iris has huge potential and we are only at the beginnings of what it can offer us as a school.

Dough Disco is a really fun and short session where each child has a small piece of play dough which they manipulate throughout a specifically chosen up beat Dough Disco track. A relevant Dough Disco play list has been created on the I Pod to create variety and keep the children interested and motivated to join in. The session is led by a Practitioner who role models different hand and finger movements throughout the track to ensure that their hands and fingers have a thorough workout and the children’s skills and control continue to develop. The children in Maisy’s story time also have a daily finger and core stretching routine that compliments and enhances these skills further as part of their story time routine. Daisy Duck children also have a weekly dough disco session as part of their story time routine.

Children also have the opportunity to engage in Squiggle, Wiggle Disco, in the Autumn term the indoor experience is open to all children, but in the following 2 terms this is used to consolidate and extend those children that have engaged in Literacy Target Time. The outdoor Squiggle Wiggle Session is always available to all children and mainly focuses on the large writing dance movements, mark making is offered when appropriate to do so. The indoor session is closely linked to the children’s Literacy target time and the movements explored resemble the letter formation patterns associated with the letter they have been focusing on during the week. Monty the Literacy puppet also joins in with the session as a continuity and reinforcement that continues to make connections for the children. The Squiggle Wiggle Disco programme is developed from ‘Squiggle While you Wiggle’ by Shonnette Bason. It involves the children focusing on different writing patterns, using both gross and fine motor movements. The children use both hands at all times and the session begins with big movements through dance, using ribbons, hoops, wands etc. Children make these patterns to an upbeat disco track, following the Practitioner’s Lead. The same track is then repeated, but this time children have a mark making tool in each hand and big paper. The idea is that they transfer their bigger dance movements to more refined mark making movements that link closely to the writing patterns they have been exploring.

The children that have a specific Squiggle Wiggle Disco session have the opportunity to take home a Squiggle Wiggle Disco bag to share the experience with their family. This contains mark making tools, 2 dance props, an instruction sheet and a booklet that helps them to understand the importance of writing patterns and how they link to letter formation. The bags are very popular and have so far led to very positive feedback and lots of family enjoyment!

Opportunities for developing core strength are also developed, this is a really important development for our children as their core strength is key to future literacy success. We encourage the children to draw on the floor on their tummies, using big paper, this is sometimes seen as they write the poem of the week together. Maisy Mouse children have a daily routing at the beginning of their story time to stretch their core and the children are also encouraged to stretch through their daily nursery rhyme actions. The children’s core muscles are also developed through Roly Poly Friday and Yoga movements and breaths, inspired by the 2014-15 programme delivered by a qualified Practitioner. Laura now delivers a carefully planned weekly yoga session for the children to extend these movements. See the Physical policy for more information. Core muscle development is essential as the children develop and strengthen their posture as their writing skills progress.

The nursery are about to invest in a set of I Pads for the children to use, as the current staff I Pads are no longer appropriate to offer the children independent use. The I Pads planned for children’s use in the Literacy area will have specifically chosen programmes on them to promote talking skills, writing skills and phonic awareness as well as opportunities to create their own stories and story boards and to listen to animated stories and rhymes together. The I Pads will be used to extend children’s literacy learning through the use of a different media, the explorations they engage with will support and compliment the rest of the learning that is taking place around them. The I Pads will not be used to play games upon as the team feel that this learning takes place extensively in the children’s home environment. There are 2 relaxing areas for the children to share books together and the children build relationships with Maisy Mouse, Sidney and Betty in Maisy’s Mouse House and enjoy sharing stories with Daisy Duck in Daisy Duck’s Story Den. There is an opportunity for families to share stories together in the conservatory reading area of nursery, and families are welcome to select books from here to borrow and enjoy reading together at home. Families are often seen sharing stories on the Sofa in the Daisy Story area, this can often be a nurturing experience as they settle their children before they leave them at nursery. Cushions, comfy settees, canopy spaces to go inside and relevant spaces for stretching out all help to create stimulating and relaxing areas to encourage the children to explore and engage with books, through looking independently or by enjoying sharing and storytelling with friends. Practitioners spend regular time in these spaces to engage with the children’s storytelling skills, enabling them to interact with them, role model for them and extend the children’s confidence and book skills incidentally, but effectively.

Retelling stories through storytelling and drama are created both indoors and outdoors to encourage the children to take on different roles as they act out familiar stories and rhymes with the support of costumes and props provided in the conservatory area of the nursery. These resources help to encourage and develop the children’s storytelling and narrative skills as well as develop appropriate recall and sequencing skills. It helps to bring favourite stories, new stories or rhymes to life and supports the children’s confidence to talk and communicate together as they learn to negotiate and share within the communication process.

A music area promotes an enthusiasm to engage in percussion exploration and music making as well as singing and enjoying music together. There is a music hut and a small carpeted area with cushions and small chairs and a range of percussion instruments to explore independently or within a small group. Practitioner interaction is planned in regularly and promotes and develops the children’s listening skills, encouraging them to listen to a wide range of music, poetry, rhymes and stories and engage the children in the development of spoken language through singing and storytelling. We also have a great recycled musical space outdoors, where the children can enjoy making sounds and singing through pots and pans, old baking trays, large containers that have become drums. This area is popular and attracts lots of boys to make lots of noise!!! Extending their rhythm skills, their ability to change sounds and encouraging them to sing, communicate and interact, as they play amongst their recycled band. The nursery has recently been focusing on nursery rhyme singing and have replaced the poem of the week with the nursery rhyme of the week. Families have a weekly Facebook post available to them that promotes the nursery rhyme, provides the words for them and has a carefully chosen You Tube link to enable them to hear the nursery rhyme tune. This weekly post is very well received and as a result of this, families have been learning nursery rhymes together, which is brilliant.

The nursery has joined Valley Arts, a community of schools that are working hard to promote the arts in the community. As a result of this, children and their families are going to sing nursery rhymes in the community as part of a poetry evening celebration, this has been well received and supported by our families.

Music is regularly explored in the outdoor environment where the I Pod is taken outside for the children to dance and move around to with a range of resources available to them such as percussion instruments and ribbon sticks to enhance their rhythmical music skills. They have the opportunity for a different musical focus every day and some children have the opportunity to take song and rhyme sacks home to promote singing within the family. Jo, from Moo Music, comes into nursery once a week to share her skills and promote instrument exploration and singing with our nursery children.

Singing favourite, familiar songs on a regular basis is so important for developing children’s talk, particularly for those children who have limited language skills. This is due to the rhymes already having the language to practice readily available to them, meaning that children don’t have to word find so have the confidence to join in and just enjoy exploring their language through song. Children with limited language are regularly observed singing whole nursery songs with very little difficulty, developing confidence to join in and share successfully in this language experience with their peers. Those children that are identified as being less confident talkers have the opportunity to take a singing sack home. This contains an instrument, a play microphone, a song, a hand puppet related to the song and a nursery rhyme book. It aims to promote the importance of singing at home and helps to support and develop children’s spoken language and narrative skills.

There is a permanent role play area inside which is called Grandpa Joe’s House and this area stays as a constant resource for the children to explore many different areas of play, supporting and extending their Communication and Language skills. Similar role play also happens incidentally in the outdoors in area such as the mud pie kitchen, the big outdoor sand pit and picnic tables, dens and grassy areas of the garden. There are emergent writing opportunities within the imaginative and role play areas to promote purposeful mark making that the children can then use to communicate to others around them ie creating menus and timetables, taking orders on small note pads and making appointments in diaries. These experiences help children to make strong links with the marks that they make, helping them to develop their awareness of written print and engaging with it purposefully through their play as they use it for communication. Practitioners engage with the children’s imaginative and role play, helping to develop and nurture confidences and extending their language opportunities through role modelling and introducing new vocabulary through their interactions. Practitioners help to develop conversations and scenarios with the children, role modelling and interacting as they nurture, support and extend the children’s play. It is vital that Practitioners observe the children’s play first and tune into the language that is already happening within it. Practitioners should always aim to allow the children to continue to lead their own play and talk, not begin to take over and then lead the play themselves. Their role is to be supportive and extensive and their main aim is to enhance and develop the language already happening and look for opportunities to role model alongside to promote and introduce further language skills.

The children all have a specific daily story time. These groups are divided into three, Daisy, Maisy and Rainbow Fish, and all progressively develop from one to another. Specific children may stay in certain story groups for longer due to each story group being carefully planned to support their needs. The story groups are carefully planned and have a different focus for each session. Some develop specific skills such as ECO and Sustainability, Respect and Emotional awareness skills and others simply promote a love for stories, encouraging simple interactions with story books and songs. For the children who have difficulty with their listening and attention skills, stories recorded, being read by a nursery Practitioner, or animated stories downloaded from U Tube, are integrated into their story sessions, alongside stories read first hand. These children are captivated by screen, which seems to enhance their listening and attention skills, so integrating these opportunities within their normal storytelling sessions seems to help to develop their ability to listen for longer periods of time, drawing them in and engaging them with a quality story time.

When appropriate for the children’s needs a special Bucket time is offered for a small group of children who are unable to access a normal story time. This is at the discretion of the team and Bucket time is often offered to SEN and EAL children as part of their language support and the development of their listening

and responding skills. The SLT specialist comes in once a week to support these children, alongside Nursery Practitioners and has been promoting and role modelling Attention Autism as another learning tool to support their language needs. SEN children are also supported in their language development through PECS, this is a specialised programme that allows children to make choices through pictures to enable them to communicate in a way that supports their spoken language skills. PECS is a support tool and through its use the children’s voice is always paramount in its use and prioritised, encouraged and supported at whatever level the children can communicate. This can be through non-verbal gestures, signs, noises or the development of emerging words, our priority is to encourage talking at whatever level and PECS offers support to enable this to happen. One child has her own PECS IPAD and the team work closely with the SLT team to use it appropriately to encourage and extend language and choices for this child.

Those children who show confidence in their story telling have the opportunity to take home a story sack to share with their family. The following week they have the opportunity to do the group story, using their story sack, with the support of a nursery practitioner. Their story telling is discretely videoed using the I Pad and the parents are encouraged to view and celebrate the progress and excellent achievement of their child.

Children have a specific Literacy target session during their fourth term in nursery, if it is relevant to their developmental needs. They are carefully assessed and then 2 Literacy targets are set for them, one for emergent writing and the other for phonic awareness. The progress children make during this target term is monitored and, if appropriate new targets are set midway through.

In their target time they engage with Monty the Puppet who introduces key letter sounds using the support of the Jolly Phonics actions. He also encourages children to engage in specific emergent writing challenges that encourage confidence building, enabling them to be purposeful writers. Each activity compliments and supports children’s letter awareness development and is differentiated for each child as their learning progresses. These activities are varied in their form and encourage the children to write purposefully and for meaning, and to use their own emergent writing to communicate to others within their small group session. Target time is taught creatively and the children have great fun engaging with Monty as they explore literacy together. This learning is extended into the home and parents are supported in finding exciting and creative ways to extend their children’s developing literacy skills that compliment the learning that they have been achieving within the nursery. The children’s literacy is also extended into the outside and the Forest Schools environments, and phonic awareness is developed in the woodland during their woodland experience. The children are encouraged to reflect on the letters that they explore during their target sessions in the nursery and have fun exploring and extending these skills in the woodland environment and the garden, through games and using natural resources around them. This learning experience is vital in helping them to retain and make further links with their sounds as it is scientifically proven that more information is retained when learned through an outdoor experience. Outdoors also appeals hugely to the boys and this offers great opportunity to take the physicality of learning sounds to another level. Results show that this helps the boys to achieve far higher than they would have done without that outdoor learning experience because they are physically engaging in a space that motivates them to learn.

The children have a carefully planned baking session once a week and this usually reflects on the initial letter sound that they have been exploring ie they may make melting moments to compliment their exploration of the letter sound m. The progress children make during this target term is monitored and, if appropriate new targets are set mid way through. All children that engage in Literacy Target time make significant progress and it impacts highly on their overall achievements both for writing and phonic awareness. This is a result of creating a stimulus, but then filtering that through many different

experiences, offering a wide and varied approach to applying, reflecting upon and embedding children’s understanding and learning in a way that stimulates their interests and needs.

Those children that show the beginnings of understanding for phonetical word building, are supported and extended through a 10 week word play scheme of work, this leads to them being able to create a simple sentence together as a group, using the support of images alongside their word building and CVC skills. They explore and understand what Vowels are, they understand the use of a full stop and the need for spaces in between the words. The children that engage in this programme of work are specifically chosen for their ability and understanding of language, and this would never be offered to children that weren’t developmentally ready to be challenged in this area of Literacy. These children are usually selected as 5th termers or those children whose families have chosen to defer their primary school place and have already experienced a Literacy Target Time programme, or already demonstrate a basic understanding for word building.

The Literacy Coordinator has created an environmental Print display that portrays language that has been photographed in the children’s local town. There are 2 environmental treasure hunts that have also been created for the children to explore with their families. The children use a laminated sheet with photographs on and take it around the town to find the print, encouraging them to recognise environmental print around them and promote its importance amongst the family. There are 2 environmental prints to explore in their homes too, again promoting its importance and raising the awareness that the children are able to recognise words well before they embark on a school reading programme. The children can gain a certificate once they have done a treasure hunt if their families choose to engage in this home school experience. Talking time has also been introduced as a weekly Literacy Focus, and aims to give all children a voice and develop individual confidences and skills at being a talker, sharing vocal speech through stimulating images and talking opportunities. Charlie Chatterbox is a popular talking puppet that is used to promote talking and he is used alongside carefully planned activities that aim to promote talking and extending children’s spoken language through vocal speech or song. The Practitioner’s role is to inspire talk, to listen, support and prompt speech where appropriate through sensitive questioning and encouragement, but most importantly to remember that the child is the talker and quite times within their speech are to be respected as thinking time. Talking time aims to develop creative thinking and communicating as well as encouraging and extending the children’s ability to ask questions, or join in group singing if their self-confidence prevents them from communicating.

The daily Aspiration Group works with children who have already well developed language skills and offers many different opportunities for discussions and learning new language through inspiring and creative language opportunities. Children are challenged to join in group discussions, learning about the different roles and responsibilities for all that happen amongst discussions. Their language is challenged and extended through detailed language content that offers opportunities to discuss informative, but challenging subject matter such as deforestation, offering them new language as well as the opportunity to discuss and understand what these language concepts and words mean. Where possible the children’s language is extended through new learning experiences that promote revisiting leading to build and extending on the language previously gained. A joint Tapestry post is created and shared with all the families of Rainbow Fish children, offering information on the concepts being explored and promoting extended learning opportunities for home.

Social singing time is for all the children, but specific children are drawn into it that find engaging in social communicating with their friends a challenge. Social singing time sensitively encourages children to share in group circle singing with Charlie Chatterbox, the puppet. They are sensitively encouraged to take on a role and interact with others through singing and role play. The aim of this is to encourage communication through a media that children can succeed through; as the narrative is already there and they don’t have to think about the language they are going to say, this process is already done for them through the words

of the song. They are also amongst a group, allowing their confidences to grow without having to speak individually; their ability to do this continues to be nurtured as their confidences grow.

The children have the opportunity to take a chatterbox or chatter bag home. The aim of a Chatterbox/bag is to encourage Parents to engage in their children’s talk through their own child led play and develop an understanding about the importance of talk within this.

The Chatterbox/bag puts play resources into it that it knows inspires the child, but also offers the child the opportunity to choose play items for themselves, giving them choices within the process. Popular soft toy characters also support the chatterboxes and these include Peppa Pig and George, Woody and Buzz Light-year, Dora the Explorer and Rory the Racing Car, Henry the Hedgehog. The Chatterbox/bags are very popular and have been extremely well received by families that have had the opportunity to borrow one. Feedback books are made available to give parents the opportunity to share information and provide valuable feedback from their child’s time with the chatterbox. This is a vital resource that potentially parents can share in, if they choose to read previous comments made by other families. Hopefully reflecting on other’s comments will create confidences and reassurances that talking happens for all within an inspired and shared learning opportunity.

Planning and Assessment

Planning covers all aspects of Communication, Language and Literacy. The Literacy Curriculum is an important element of all curriculum areas. The Literacy Co-ordinator ensures that Communication, Language and Literacy are an integral part of teaching and learning throughout both the indoor and the outdoor areas.

The quality and continuity of the offered and received literacy curriculum is monitored by the Literacy Co-ordinator who ensures that all activities allow for differentiation and are open ended, allowing for children to take them in their own direction of learning. All Practitioners support and extend children’s learning through careful interactions, role modelling, using specific questioning skills and supporting confidences, and offering praise and encouragement as well as celebrating achievements.

All literacy activities are carefully planned for, using The EYFS, and the Every Child Matters Documentation. The Literacy coordinator has ensured that all children have the opportunity to extend their learning through the different developmental stages, aiming to achieve strong foundations to help them to progress appropriately towards or beyond the Early Learning Goals within their capabilities. This ensures children constantly achieve and are motivated to naturally progress to their next stage of learning. Observations and data are collected termly for all the children through a wide range of assessment opportunities.

Literacy progress is monitored closely in all areas through a range of assessment opportunities including photographic evidence of pencil hold, Literacy Target Time assessments, Forest School data, ECAT data, Ferre Laever’s data and our these all feed into our main rigorous EAZ Mag assessment system. The data that this system can provide for specific cohorts of children in all areas of Communication, Language and Literacy can be scrutinised and these discussions lead to changing or adapting teaching and learning opportunities, to ensure the relevant progress is made for all children.

Generic planning documentation has been created and has been developed into 4 areas of learning: the first combines Communication and Language - Listening and Attention and Understanding, the second is Communication and Language – Speaking, the 3rd is Literacy – Reading and the last document is Literacy – Writing. All 4 booklets are progressively developed using 3 main areas; Early Development, Early Learning Goals and Academically More Able. This ensures that all children’s abilities to engage with the Literacy curriculum are carefully planned for, taking into consideration all levels of learning from Pre Early Learning

Goals to progressing to an AMA programme of support to enhance and develop children’s learning to whatever level of achievement they are able to reach, within or beyond The Early Learning Goal Targets. This means that all children will engage at appropriate levels ensuring that they all make progress and achieve highly. The documents have been written using the EYFS framework alongside the Development Matters in the Early Years Foundation document.

The EYFS documentation outlines Early Learning Goals for all children to strive towards by the end of the Reception Year within school. They state that children should be able to achieve the following by this time:

Communication and Language – Listening and AttentionChildren listen attentively in a range of situations. They listen to stories, accurately anticipating key events and respond to what they hear with relevant comments, questions or actions. They give their attention to

what others say and respond appropriately, while engaged in another activity.

Communication and Language – UnderstandingChildren follow instructions involving several ideas or actions. They answer ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions

about their experiences and in response to stories or events.

Communication and Language – SpeakingChildren express themselves effectively, showing awareness of the listener’s needs. They use past, present and future forms accurately when talking about events that have happened or are to happen in the future.

They develop their own narratives and explanations by connecting ideas or events.

Literacy – ReadingChildren read and understand simple sentences. They use phonetic knowledge to decode regular words

and read them aloud accurately. They also read some common irregular words. They demonstrate understanding when talking with others about what they have read.

Literacy - Writing Children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds. They also write some irregular common words. They write simple sentences which can be read by themselves and

others. Some words are spelt correctly and others are phonetically plausible.

Each area of the curriculum has specific vocabulary sheets used by all Practitioners eg in the creative area there is key vocabulary to draw upon, introduce and extend. This ensures that the team use and reinforce a common bank of vocabulary and open ended questioning skills to engage and extend learning and language. This creates continuity within all teaching throughout the nursery.

Vocabulary lists for a range of Literacy Curriculam areas of learning are displayed prominently within the nursery environment to encourage a broad range of vocabulary development occurs as discussions and investigations take place.

Weekly planning sheets state the daily focus and these aim to be wide and varied ensuring that all areas of the planning documentation are explored and developed.

Assessments occur weekly to enable activities to be reviewed and teaching strategies to be adapted. Children’s progress is recorded on their own individual learning journeys through Tapestry and these are constantly updated by Practitioners, through the use of practitioners’ individual IPads. These learning journeys celebrate the children’s achievements and are a shared resource for parents, who have the opportunity to engage and comment, or add their own posts to the journey to share their children’s achievements at home. The tapestry journeys support and inform our EAZ mag assessment system and the points progress that the children make in each area of development can be observed and used to

indicate where extra support may be required. Individual children’s needs and progress are discussed by the whole team and targets are set accordingly.

Both these assessment systems move through the developmental stages in line with the EYFS documentation and Development Matters documentation from pre early learning goals to levels where children achieve highly within an AMA spectrum of learning, and further opportunities for development can be identified and supported accordingly. This ensures that children are given credit for their achievements and enables all practitioners to meet children’s individual needs through providing challenging experiences at all levels of ability. The children are assessed in all areas of learning on entry, to provide a baseline which is then recorded on the EAZ mag assessment system. Data is collected and monitored carefully and is then re-assessed termly for all children. (see the assessment policy for more details). Children’s progress is also collected through Tapestry and shared with families.

Children are also encouraged to set their own targets and also make choices in the provision of activities that may stimulate a specific interest or need. Academically More Able provision is high and specific children are identified on entry to nursery. If others emerge during their time at nursery, they too will be included. Any children identified as being Academically More Able will have their abilities nurtured and extended in specific areas of learning from the time they are identified, to the time they leave the nursery. They are encouraged to set their own targets and develop their learning with individuality, this is supported by a key Practitioner whose role is to ensure their learning is high and progress is continuous. This Practitioner will continue to work with this child throughout their time in nursery and will be responsible for communicating progress to parents and celebrating their achievements visually through the child’s own Tapestry space. For more information please refer to the Academically More Able development file.

As a Teaching School we have SLE’s that can offer support and development opportunities for other schools and professionals, role modelling and supporting excellent practice. The Literacy Coordinator is an SLE and has extensive knowledge about all areas of Communication, Language and Literacy, and regularly supports and role models for visiting professionals, School Direct Students, NVQ students as well as supporting the work of the Local Authority. We work very closely with other schools and professionals to ensure the Teaching and learning that we offer to our children and their families is of an outstanding quality. We constantly strive to do more and to disseminate our practice to help others to do the same.

Home School Liaison

To support & promote the literacy curriculum in the Nursery the Literacy co-ordinator has set up a range of strategies for parents to actively engage in literacy with their children and develop their knowledge and understanding of the literacy curriculum. Here are some examples;

Chatterboxes and bags

Focused time to explore and explain how tapestry works for every family, this is closely monitored to record which families engage and for those that may need further support.

Squiggle Wiggle Bags

Environmental Print Hunts for the town centre and their home.

A Daily library

Purposeful Target support material and documentation that offers support, advice and guidance for families.

Exciting home activities that extend the letter sound awareness that their children are exploring within their target time, through home and community activities that promote fun learning together.

Recipes and baking baskets

Nursery booklets/information sheets and leaflets on the literacy curriculum & aspects of it.

Talking Ted and his links with Aspiration Group

Parent library literature eg the development of reading.

Story sacks and rhyme sacks taken home to share with their families

Close links with the local children’s librarian who comes into school to share stories and develop close relationships with the children and their families.

Frank the Feelings Frog goes home in celebration of recognising empathy, kindness and emotional well being within children.

Love heart group that supports specific emotional well being within children and works closely with specific families and children.

Tapestry, the Nursery School Website, The Facebook page and Twitter Pages provide information for parents and a voice to access and have a say in the education of their children. As a family it gives them opportunities to engage together in their children’s learning journeys giving them the opportunity to become involved in this process.

An approachable team who are always there to offer support and advice to parents no matter how small their need, time is always found for them and that important partnership plays a huge role in the children’s progress and their ability to shine both in nursery and in the home.

Parent consultations Laura Dolby - Literacy coordinator (February 2018)