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Four Acres Academy
Building relationships that enable children to learn, grow and achieve
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WRITING
Writing
By the end of Year R, the children are expected to be writing simple sentences by themselves.
So what does the journey throughout the year look like?
Supporting your child to spell/sound out words
This is Fred the frog from our phonics program, RWI.
Fred only speaks in sounds, he can't use words.
We teach the children how to sound out words using their "Fred fingers"
Please see the video below for more information on "Fred fingers"
Supporting motor skills
It is so important for children to develop their gross and fine motor skills. Building up strength in their arm and hand muscles will help them hold a pencil correctly and have more control when drawing and writing.
How can I support my child's gross motor skills?
- Trips to the park
- Riding a bike/scooter
- Space to freely run & jump
- Balancing across beams/planks
How can I support my child's fine motor skills?
- Playdough/putty
- Threading with beads and string/thread
- Practising cutting with scissors
- Using tweezers or pegs
Forming letters
It is so important that children form letters in the correct orientation and start at the right place, even if this means their letters are a bit messy at first! This will ensure that when the children start joining letters later on in their school life, they will be able to do it easily. Below are the rhymes that we use to teach children how to form their letters in Reception:
Supporting Communication and Language
It is really important to develop children's language skills, because language is at the heart of all other learning. In school, we 'test' the children's language ability in their first few weeks at school and those children who are identified as below age appropriate have extra support throughout the school year.
For some children, they receive extra help either 1:1 or small groups. For others, we ensure our learning environment is language rich and provide opportunities for children to develop their language skills. For example we read many stories to the children each day, we act them out, we provide role play areas that are language rich and have lots of photographs of the children around the classroom to encourage conversation between peers.
How you can support your child's language development in three easy steps:
- Modelling back correctly (if they say "I want a nana" you could model back "You want a banana?")
- Repeating their sentence but adding new words (If they say "I saw bus" you could model back "I saw a big red bus")
- Changing their words to introduce them to more exciting choices (If they say "That elephant is so big" you could model back "I know isn't he enormous?")
What will really help my child's language development?
- Reading lots of stories, discussing characters and main events
- Playing with and talking to your child as much as possible
- Spending less time on an iPad or in front of a screen
- Dictating their play as they are playing
- Introducing your child to new words
- Exciting experiences that they can talk about e.g. visiting a zoo, aquarium, farm