Vision and Mission for our Strathmore Learners

At Strathmore, we are dedicated to preparing and challenging every learner to become an active contributor to their community by championing independence and communication in a learning environment that is accessible to all. Literacy is key to this and is taught through reading, phonics and writing within the Strathmore Developmental Framework and is a vital part of learning in each learner’s school day.

We highly value reading as a key life skill and are dedicated to enabling pupils to become lifelong readers. We do this through reading vocabulary rich material, learning through sensory stories, guided reading session, listening and understanding skills and shared story times. We intend to encourage pupils to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live; to establish a love of reading; and develop communication skills for lifelong learning.

We believe that reading for pleasure and experiencing a book with support (e.g., having a story read) is vital to many areas of a learner’s development. Reading for pleasure has social benefits and can improve a learner’s relationships with important people in their lives and help them make connections to the wider community. 

At Strathmore, all learners are provided with many opportunities to develop and apply their writing skills across the curriculum. This skill sits firmly within physical and motor development. It is recognised that to perform mark-making and handwriting, learners first need to develop physical skills such as hand-eye co-ordination; muscle memory; body control; pencil grasp and letter formation. Handwriting involves many complex skills such as knowledge of the letters of the alphabet and visual, perceptual skills.

We are developing early reading skills by fostering a love of reading, sharing stories, poems, rhymes, and songs. We create opportunities for children to read and reread books that match their phonic stage and have in place a secure, systematic, synthetic phonic programme. We believe that early reading leads to developing skills such as empathy, problems solving and social skills and support functional literacy in the local community.

At Strathmore we are using Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised Programme which is a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme developed for schools by schools. Based on the original Letters and Sounds, but extensively revised to provide a complete teaching programme meeting all the expectations of the National Curriculum. All learners at Strathmore are working on a phase that links to their ability, from phase 1-5.

This part of the website will support families with resources, ideas and strategies that can be used at home to support Literacy.

Please see the links below for some more information on Little Wandle Phonics Programme.

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/my-letters-and-sounds/everybody-read/

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/