Our aim is to help the children to be able to read, write, listen and communicate clearly. We encourage children to develop a love of reading and enjoyment of books in a variety of ways and they are encouraged to explore their own creative ideas. Comprehension skills are developed through high-quality discussion and from reading and discussing a wide range of stories, poems and non-fiction texts. We encourage children to take books home with them to read with their parents, along with a reading diary for home-school liaison.

All children are encouraged to see themselves as writers. This process begins with the provision of plenty of opportunity for mark making in the Early Years. Spelling and handwriting are developed systematically within daily phonics sessions. Individual and group writing targets provide clear next steps to enable children to continually improve their writing.

Every opportunity is taken to enhance children’s vocabulary and they are shown how to understand relationships between words and to develop understanding and use of figurative speech.

Read Write Inc
At Hurst Green, we use Read Write Inc. (RWI) Phonics to teach reading. RWI Phonics is a programme for 4-13 year-olds created by Ruth Miskin and published by Oxford University Press. The Read Write Inc. programme is carefully matched to the new curriculum, giving your children the best chance of success against national expectations. They show teachers, teaching assistants and parents step-by-step how to teach all children to become fluent readers, confident speakers and willing writers. Our school uses Read Write Inc. Phonics for our children in Nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. It is a comprehensive literacy programme, weaving decoding, comprehension, writing and spelling together seamlessly. For information and tutorials on how to support your child learning to read please head to: the Ruth Miskin Website

Talk for writing

Since October 2019 all staff have been trained in Talk for Writing developed by Pie Corbett. Talk for Writing is powerful because it enables children to imitate the language they need for a particular topic orally before reading and analysing it and then writing their own version. We are looking forward to implementing this here at Hurst Green.