01843 221877
Garlinge Primary School and Nursery, Westfield Road, Margate, Kent, CT9 5PA
At Garlinge Primary School and Nursery, we provide all children with access to a broad and balanced English curriculum which is interesting, engaging and delivers a range of differentiated learning opportunities and challenges, which will develop a life-long love of learning. We recognise children’s prior learning, encourage the children to develop interpersonal skills, build resilience and become creative, critical thinkers. Children are supported to achieve their potential and progress with confidence to the next phase of their education.
We provide a rigorous and well-organised English curriculum that provides many purposeful opportunities for reading, writing and discussion. We believe that children need to develop a secure technical knowledge-base in English, which follows a clear pathway of progression as they advance. We know that a secure basis in literacy skills is crucial to a high-quality education and will give our children the tools they need to participate fully as a member of society.
At Garlinge Primary School and Nursery, we use a whole text (book) as a stimulus to deliver the National Curriculum in a cross-curricular way through topic-based learning. This allows for key skills to be applied in a purposeful and engaging context.
At Garlinge, we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Nursery/Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.
As a result, all our children are able to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. At Garlinge Primary School and Nursery, we also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. We have a strong focus on language development for our children because we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects.
Letters and Sounds Phonics Information
Little Wandle Letters and Sound - Programme Progression Reception and Year 1 Overviews
Reading happens almost all of the time in our school and we try to promote reading for enjoyment at every available opportunity. Here at Garlinge, we have a variety of reading schemes working alongside each other which are colour banded, ranging from Pink level books through to Black. This means that when you know your child’s book band, you will be able to select books from different reading schemes with confidence, knowing that they are right for your child. Many schools band books by colour to help children choose the right books for their reading ability – see below how the book bands correlate with both year group and reading age. This allows children to be guided to appropriate reading material. Not only is it a good way to organise the levels of books in schools, it can also help staff to audit numbers, types of books and the spread of various levels across the school.
Children are assessed regularly in their reading throughout the school year, ensuring that they experience success and progress from one level to the next. Children have daily guided reading sessions to help develop the skills they need to become competent readers.
Suggested Reading for Years 1-6
Reading Progression at Garlinge
Year 1 Parents Reading Workshop 2020
Year 2 Parents Reading Workshop 2019
Year 3 and 3 Parent Reading Workshop 2019
Year 5 and 6 Parent Reading Workshop
For tips on how to get your child reading click on this link: www.savethechildren.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/RODO-top-tips.pdf
Garlinge Primary School and Nursery was filled with a range of different story characters as they celebrated World Book Day 2022 on Thursday 3rd March.
Children across the school took part in a number of fun and inspiring activities aimed at promoting a love of reading. This included children dressing up as their favourite book characters, paired reading between older and younger classes, class quizzes and artistic paintings of their favourite stories or characters. Children in Early Years and KS1 also had the exciting opportunity to meet a local author, Paul Deslandes, writer of The Garden Monster, who shared his fictional story with the children and talked to them about what life is like to be a children’s author.
“It has been an absolute pleasure to visit Garlinge and to see the children in their wonderful costumes on World Book Day. I loved sharing my book with the children and they thoroughly enjoyed becoming illustrators themselves. Thank you to Garlinge for being so welcoming and I look forward to coming back again in the future”.
Last term, we welcomed Will Mabbit to work with children in years 1, 2, 3 and 4. Will led two assemblies, one for Key Stage 1 and the other for Lower Key Stage 2 where he shared some of his favourite books with the children, discussed how he writes and his own sources of inspiration. He also led 2 separate workshops for children in years 2 and 4, where he helped them to write their own short stories using a range of imaginative ideas. At the end of the day, Moon Lane book shop in Ramsgate held a book sale on the year 5 playground so that children could purchase one or several of Will’s books and have these personally signed by the author himself! It was a fantastic day and our children were thoroughly engrossed and enthused by meeting a ‘real life’ author in person.
The school has a Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 library area which offers a selection of different genre books. The children have an opportunity to visit the library and select books to borrow and take home.
To inspire our children to have a lifelong love of reading, our school recently invited local artist Ty Locke in to transform our Key Stage 1 library in to an ‘enchanted British woodland’. What a fantastic job he has done! I’m sure many children will love to visit this reading space for years to come! To bring the mural to life, Ty included many bespoke features to make the library an exciting place to visit, including 20 hidden animals to find amongst the trees and woodland. Can you see any of them in the picture above? Why not visit our KS1 library to find the rest of these for yourself!
It has been fun to incorporate the children’s ideas and see them come to life with this project. We hope many of our children enjoy visiting this exciting reading area in which to further their enjoyment of books.
What do the children have to say about the library?
“It looks lie a real enchanted forest, I can’t wait to read books in there!” Joel, Year 3.
“It’s amazing! It’s a 10/10 from us! I hope to be able to go there soon!” Kourntey, Year 3
Punctuation and grammar are taught regularly within class and where possible taught in a context. These skills allow for children to write accurately and using standard English. Children are provided with a wide range of opportunities to write in a variety of genres for a purpose and different audiences.
Spelling is taught throughout the school. Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 tend to do this as part of their daily phonics sessions and years 2 to year 6 follow the No Nonsense Spelling scheme. The programme is easy to use, flexible and comprehensive, providing sufficient guidance to implement an effective spelling teaching programme. The programme of study consists of termly overviews, breaking down the requirements of the National Curriculum into strands with individual lesson plans and resources.
The school uses a cursive script for handwriting and the skills for developing this are taught from Nursery onwards. We look at the movements needed to create the correct letter formation. These skills are practised regularly throughout the school in all classes.
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