Curriculum Information
Our Curriculum
We are currently in the process of reviewing, evaluating and modifying our curriculum. We aim to have a curriculum that:
- is well-sequenced, balanced and knowledge-rich
- prioritises the key skills of reading, writing & maths
- makes clear links between subjects
phonics & reading
At Maulden Lower School, we believe that for all our children to become fluent readers and writers, phonics must be taught through a systematic and structured phonics programme. Phonics is a method of learning letter sounds, blending them together to read words and segmenting them to spell words.
We follow the Read Write Inc system which teaches phonics in the following order:
Pupils in Early Years and KS1 are taught Phonics daily and children in all year groups read regularly to their class teacher and teaching assistants in school during the daily reading half-hour. The Reading schemes we use include Oxford Reading Tree, Rigby Rockets and Collins Big Cat.
Terms We Use with the Children
Fred Talk – Saying the sounds separately in a word before blending them together to read the word (Fred is a toy frog who can only talk in sounds e.g. sh-o-p)
Special Friends – Letters that go together to make a new sound by forming digraphs (sh, ch, ai, oo) or trigraphs (igh)
Split digraphs – We say “Where’s my friend? He’s on the end!” to show, for example, that the digraph a-e is split but still works together making the word ‘cake’ or that i-e is making the word ‘like’
Bouncy sounds – b c k d g h j p qu t w x y ch a e i o u
Stretchy sounds – f l m n r s v z sh th ng nk ay ee igh ow
Buttons and Swipes – these are used to help to read and write words by showing the single sounds with a button and a special friend with a swipe.
In the Summer Term of Year 1, there is a National Phonics Screening Test. More information can be found here.