We endeavour to maintain high standards across all the strands of literacy, with the aim that our pupils leave us as confident and skilled readers, writers and speakers.

With reading, we feel it is important to help nurture positive attitudes towards books so that children see it as a pleasurable and entertaining activity. Children are therefore strongly encouraged to read often both in and out of school.

In key stage 1, we teach daily phonics sessions where the children take part in an active lesson around a sound to help develop their reading skills.  Whilst at Lyndhurst, children develop a range of reading strategies, including using and applying phonological, contextual, grammatical and graphic knowledge.

Within the class, we follow a book-based literacy curriculum that focusses on reading comprehension, writing composition, grammar and spelling. It enables children to learn in a more fulfilling way through studying a wide range of quality and entertaining texts, often linking to other subjects. Whilst at Lyndhurst, children will write a variety of fiction and non-fiction texts, including recounts, reports, explanations, poems, plays and stories. We plan carefully to make sure children have many opportunities to develop the ability to think aloud, explore, collect ideas, draft and then edit their own work.

At Lyndhurst, we value the teaching of grammar and spelling and our children take part in focused activities but also continue to learn throughout the teaching of reading, writing and speaking. Each week the pupils have a set of spellings to revise. These spellings are linked to the spelling focus taught that week in their literacy lesson.

Handwriting is taught regularly throughout the school. We begin with mark-making in Early Years and lead up to consistent, fully joined and legible handwriting in year 6.