At The Beaulieu Park School the value of reading is paramount. Confident readers are confident learners. We know that reading is the key to unlocking learning across the curriculum.

In the primary phase of The Beaulieu Park School, we encourage children to read and enjoy books even before they start school! We have a weekly session where younger siblings and younger members of the community can come and choose a book to read from our library. In addition to this, phonics sessions begin on the first day the children start in Reception and continue until children are confident and fluent readers.  In addition to high quality phonics sessions, from Year 2 the children take part in daily Whole Class Reading sessions.

As well as enabling children to become fluent readers, our role is to encourage children and their families to develop a love of reading. We do this by:

• From Year 1, having DEAR (Drop everything and read) time each day where children and staff find a comfortable spot to read a book
• Having ‘book swap’ events, where the children can bring any books into school and swap them with their friends
• Bedtime stories evenings where children come into school with their pyjamas during the evening and listen to their favourite stories being read by staff and the older students
• Teachers and LSA’s reading to the children every day no matter what age they are!
• All children are able to visit the school library and choose a book to take home each week.

For children that find reading difficult, we ensure that they read more often at school  and we provide additional reading support in the form of the Lexia programme as well as other bespoke activities. These sessions take place before school and during the school day (where necessary).

Writing is also a priority in the primary phase of the school. Clear writers are more likely to access better jobs, achieve university degrees and be able to adapt their writing to suit the needs of different contexts. To support this, every class will have a daily handwriting session where they will be taught to form letters correctly and consistently. For younger children, this also involves completing exercises to build those key muscles that will help a child when writing.

In addition to this, spelling is taught as a discrete lesson from Year 2 upwards and children are taught various spelling conventions, helping them on their journey to become fluent spellers.

When teaching phonics, teachers and LSA’s will give children dictated words and sentences to complete. These are known as ‘super sentences’ and will ensure that children are confident and fluent when writing sentences, enabling them to shift their focus on to the content of what they are writing across a range of genres.