At Limpsfield C.E. Infant School, we have implemented Literary Tree for nearly two academic years. In that time, we have begun to integrate the holistic approach to reading and writing offered by Literacy Tree into our own provision, and have noticed a huge increase in children’s engagement and enjoyment of reading and writing across the curriculum. Over the last year, where our children were learning remotely, we have continued to provide consistent high quality teaching and learning for all of our children.
In our Early Years, we have found that all the texts we have incorporated into our planning and continuous provision have enhanced the engagement of learning in all areas, especially in role play, exploration and investigating, creativity and imagination. We were able to use Literacy Tree resources around each book on our remote learning platform Tapestry and as such, parents were able to share the incredible outcomes of their child’s learning from home. Through our remote learning, we suggested that children could create their own role-play areas linked to the text being taught, which many children and parents really enjoyed and benefitted from. As well as using the texts as stimulus for writing, we have also been able to make clear links across all curriculum areas to have a real context for learning.
The text ‘The Magic Paintbrush’ allowed for a wide range of cross curricular links including Chinese culture and traditions and exploration of art work. There was a particular strong link with Chinese New Year, where we made Chinese dragons, lanterns, explored Chinese writing, and the significance of the colour red in China.
In spring, the children focussed on the text ‘The Tiny Seed’. We encouraged children to spend time outside observing plants, carrying out science investigations and planting seeds themselves with support from their parents. Through these immersive experiences, the children were able to develop their vocabulary and apply this in their writing. Following on from their writing, we made links between our art learning to explore leaf printing and illustrated our own books.
In Key Stage 1, we have used a variety of Writing Roots from Literacy Tree to support our remote learning provision and build on the work children were familiar with from learning within school. The familiarity of the sessions and the high quality texts meant that children were fully engaged in their English learning and this was evident on the high quality work that was submitted. The variety of the opportunities and cross-curricular links within the sequences allowed children to write from first hand experiences and made learning contextualised. We found that the children continued to embed the different skills needed in English even when working remotely.
Overall, we believe that having implemented Literacy Tree, we have seen progress from all our children in their reading and writing, even when working remotely. The curriculum has really embraced the ethos of the Early Years. Parents have been delighted by the quality of provision and the high levels of engagement of their children. One of the best outcomes has been how the use of Literacy Tree has helped to develop our parents’ understanding of key aspects of their child’s development and how they learn. We are looking forward to using this increased understanding to help develop our curriculum offer further with our whole school community.
Cheryl Hudson
Headteacher
