Reading
Vision
Reading is at the heart of the curriculum. Through choosing quality texts, we want pupils to develop a love of reading and a good knowledge of a range of authors, and be able to understand more about the world in which they live, through the knowledge they’ve gained from texts.
Rationale
Reading is at the heart of our curriculum. We recognise and value the importance of developing confident readers with a love of reading, in all its forms. We passionately believe in children hearing authors and illustrators talk about the craft of writing and illustrating and strive to provide as many opportunities as possible for this to happen, especially through visits to our school and through 'book week' each year. Each class celebrates a children's author or illustrator each half term with an 'author study.'
Staff enthusiasm for reading and knowledge of classic and current children’s literature is also a high priority. Our annual book week each year is the perfect opportunity for each year group to explore different traditional tales from different cultures. Beyond the English lesson, children are exposed to and immersed in a wide range of stories, poems and other texts through book events and story-time. Book corners celebrate our reading culture and offer a cosy book nook in each class. Our school library has recently been re-designed to become the heart of the school with a wide range of books for each age range.
Year 2-6 Whole Class Guided Reading
Whole class guided reading is a teacher led session to build understanding and comprehension. In whole class guided reading sessions, children are given the same core text and asked to practice a specific reading skill. This moves away from the traditional carousel allowing more teaching time for every child. This approach ensures that all children receive continual instruction and support and all children are exposed to high quality literature.
How?
4 guided reading sessions per week as a minimum covering 2 texts in a week.
Structure
Day 1 (text 1)
Vocabulary
Reading of text. A mixture of: modelled, pair reading, quiet reading, echo reading, choral reading.
Retrieval
Day 2 (text 1)
Reading of text (modelled, pair reading, quiet reading, echo reading, choral reading)
Talk for reading covering a range of comprehension skills (summarising, predicting, inference)
Independent application, including extension questions.
Day 3 (text 2)
Vocabulary
Reading of text (modelled, pair reading, quiet reading, echo reading, choral reading)
Retrieval
Day 4 (text 2)
Reading of text (modelled, pair reading, quiet reading, echo reading, choral reading)
Talk for reading covering a range of comprehension skills (summarising, predicting, inference)
Independent application, including extension questions.
Optional day 5: timed reading comprehension practice or specific skill focus.
By the end of Key Stage 1, our children are able to:
- draw on knowledge of a broad vocabulary to understand texts they have read;
- identify characters and sequence key events from fiction texts;
- decipher information from non-fiction texts;
- make simple inferences and explain these;
- make predictions about texts from book covers and titles.
Reading continues to be prioritised through a whole class approach as quality core texts are used as a stimulus. The chosen texts link reading and writing together, creating dynamic English lessons, that inspire quality writing.
In our daily guided reading sessions, children are presented with suitably challenging texts that are used to enable our children to build on their comprehension skills, whilst also building up their stamina and pace, in an age-appropriate way.
By the end of Key Stage 2, our children have to been taught to:
- explain the meaning of new vocabulary, including subject-specific vocabulary, in context;
- locate, retrieve and record specific, relevant and important information, from a range of fiction and non-fiction texts;
- make inferences from what they have read and justify, with supporting evidence, from the text;
- make predictions from key details in the text;
- make comparisons, within texts and across texts;
- summarise main ideas from the text;
- understand and explain how content within the text can contribute towards understanding the meaning of the whole text.
Developing and Instilling a Love of Reading
Developing and instilling a love of reading is of paramount importance in our school. Our children are exposed to a diverse range of quality reading materials; they are provided with opportunities to read across all subjects, in the curriculum, and are given time to read for enjoyment, as part of their guided reading sessions.
We firmly believe that our families play a crucial role in the development of reading; therefore, we have fostered a strong home-school partnership, by using reading diaries as a tool for communication between class teachers and parents.