At Cedars Speaking and Listening, Reading and Writing are at the heart of Children’s development.
We encourage our children to be confident speakers who draw on personal experiences and develop their own opinions. Equally important is the ability to be a good listener, take turns in a conversation and respect the views of others.

We are firm believers in our children reading for enjoyment, developing a love of books and other reading materials which are shared in daily whole class reading time. During these sessions adults either read to children from a high-quality text, or alongside them whilst children read a book of their choice, demonstrating that reading is a life-long skill for everyone. World book day is one of our favourite days of the year!
Children are taught reading skills in class-based sessions. The aim of these carefully structured activities is to develop the key skills of phonic decoding and comprehension.
They learn how to read and spell regular words using decoding skills, as well as those common exception words, which have irregular phonemes and spelling patterns. In addition, they learn how to identify ‘real’ and ‘nonsense’ words using the phonic skills at an appropriate level. Children access graded books from the Read, Write Inc. scheme as well as banded texts to share at home.

The development of writing combines the skills of speech and language, reading and a strong awareness of grammar and sentence structure. The use of quality texts and different text types stimulates the imagination and confidence in the children becoming writers. Children learn how to use language effectively and to write for different purposes, combining all of these different core skills to help engage the person reading their work.
Each class has a Writer’s board where examples of cross curricular, creative and extended writing are displayed. Children are challenged to produce their best work to add to the board. An opportunity to celebrate their achievements and successes promotes a love of writing and a high level of expectation!