North Featherstone Junior And Infant School

Literacy at NFJI

Classroom Working Walls

Here at NFJI we work with our children to create useful and purposeful Literacy classroom displays. Each display is backed using our school handwriting displays to ensure that writing is modelled inline with our handwriting policy. This consistency supports, develops and encourages the high standards we expect and know that our children are capable of. The displays are updated regularly and show the journey that the children have taken to reach their end goal. Some examples of these working walls are displayed below...

Spelling Displays

Spellings are taught at the start of every literacy lesson throughout the week with spelling rules explicitly taught. As well as spelling rules, children will be taught the common exception words linked to their appropriate year groups. Spellings are taught through games, repeated practise, phonics and through learning and applying rules. Every class will display the weekly spellings on their classroom walls and children will be encouraged to use these in their writing.

Reading for Pleasure and the Library

Reading for pleasure has many non-literacy benefits and can increase empathy, improve relationships with others and improve wellbeing throughout life (The Reading Agency 2015).

Dr Seuss once said, “You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax, all you need is a book.”

At NFJI, we understand the importance of reading. Our reading books are constantly updated in line with children's interests, their favourite authors and current topical issues. We have a wide range of diverse literature both fiction and non-fiction for children to access throughout school. In the EYFS area of school they have their own fully resourced library, each class has a recently redesigned reading area, our library offers an extensive selection of quality reading and books are used throughout school within displays to support children in making links between books they have not read and topics that interest them.

To promote this, every class has a reading display discussing current authors being read, similar books to their class novels or children's recommendations. Our child Librarians also showcase new texts and recommendations by rotating the books used for display in the library. 

Handwriting Display

The brain engages differently when we write something by hand as opposed to typing it on a keyboard or by touching a screen. Studies show that writing improves memory; students retain learning better when working with new ideas through handwriting instead of typing. At NFJI, we practise handwriting regularly throughout the week and we are very proud of the handwriting our children produce. We like to show them how much we value their hard work by showcasing it in the corridors around school to allow all of our school community along with any visitors to admire. Below you can see some of the fabulous work produced by our current pupils.

Writing Across the Curriculum

We aim to give our children a purpose to their writing and an end product. We have produced recordings of poetry, displays, class books as well as writing letters and walking to the local post box to post them. Below you can see some of our creative writing displays found around the school.

These award-winning fairy tales, bedtime stories, fables and poems for kids have been very kindly donated to us by Sooper Books. To try unlimited family membership click here