Reading
Intent
At Wolborough C of E Nursery and Primary School, we believe that reading is an essential life skill and we are committed to enabling our children to become lifelong readers.
At the heart of our strategy is our drive to foster a love of reading, enriching children’s learning through carefully designed teaching activities that utilise imaginative stories and thought-provoking texts.
At Wolborough, we believe that reading is a skill that enables children to develop their learning across the wider curriculum and lays the foundations for success in future lines of study and employment. We recognise the importance of taking a consistent school approach to the teaching of reading in order to close any gaps and to target the highest possible number of children attaining the expected standard or higher.
We have high expectations of all children and we encourage children to challenge themselves, persevere and pursue success, always ‘inspiring to be their best.’
Reading and Phonics Implementation:
At Wolborough, we use The Little Wandle Letters and Sounds programme developed by Wandle and Little Sutton English Hubs. Little Wandle Letters and Sounds draws on the latest research into how children learn best; how to ensure learning stays in children’s long term memory and how best to enable children to apply their learning to become highly competent readers. Alongside the phonics scheme, we have 120 fully aligned decodable books that: it is essential that decodable books: are exactly matched to the phonics progression of the programme used, present only words made up of GPCs learned to that point, include tricky words only as they are introduced in the programme,are used exclusively when children are practising reading and not mixed in with books that are not fully decodable at the child’s level.
Children at the end of year 1 ,who have not met the required standard for phonics will have daily phonics sessions in Year 2 working through the phases either individually, in small group sessions or as a class. This continues into Key Stage 2 as necessary as Keep Up or Rapid Catch Up..
At Wolborough, we have implemented ‘Real Time’ into our daily guided reading sessions. Teachers will read with a guided group each day; children are in ability groups for this so that the text is appropriate for the needs of each child. In these sessions, teachers will ensure that rich reading opportunities are provided across the curriculum and that children are exposed to a wide range of quality texts providing context to learning. Teachers at Wolborough model, then help children guide group discussions using these strategies: predicting, questioning, inference, summarising and clarifying. Children will spend two weeks on each strategy and will develop these skills through guided reading sessions and independent reading/ writing and speaking and listening activities.
High quality texts and passages are chosen, appropriate to the expectations of the year group or ability of children, and teachers use this to model the application of the agreed reading skills. Children are taught to notice breakdown in reading - identifying words/phrases they don’t understand and strategies to fix breakdown in meaning. Children are taught to relate the text to themselves, previous reading experiences and the world around them. Any new or unfamiliar words are then displayed on the vocabulary learning wall.
At Wolborough, we believe that regular reading at home is an important tool in developing reading skills. Where children do not read at home, staff, when able, facilitate extra reading sessions in the school day. Children are asked to read three times a week at home in KS1 and four times a week in KS2.
To motivate children to read at home and to foster a love of reading, we are introducing ‘Book Quest’ at Wolborough. We will be using our local library to facilitate children’s exploration of different texts. We will visit the library regularly and children will be given a book tracker to monitor their reading coverage. Teachers will track which books children have read and will ask inference and comprehension questions to assess a child’s understanding of what they have read.
To maintain these positive attitudes towards reading, we have established two reading reps from each class. These children are changed regularly to give all children the opportunity to discuss what they have read. The role of a reading rep is to feedback to their peers about what they have read, recommend books and give reasons for their choices. By listening to reading rep’s views about reading, we believe that other children are involved and inspired to select different texts and resources. This will play a part in strengthening our school’s reading culture.
Other activities at Wolborough to promote reading for pleasure include: end of day reading, regular time for quiet reading to enjoy self-chosen books, reading challenges from the library, World Book Day, classroom libraries/book areas and Book Quest displays.
Impact
As we believe that reading is key to all learning, the impact of our reading curriculum goes beyond the result of statutory assessments. Children have the opportunity to enter the wide and varied magical worlds that reading opens up to them. As they develop their own interest in books, a deep love of literature across a range of genres cultures and styles is enhanced.
Our school has a supportive ethos towards reading and our approaches support the children in developing their collaborative and independent skills. As a result of our high-quality reading provision, we have a community of enthusiastic readers who enjoy showcasing their developing knowledge and reading skills.
As a Year 6 reader, transitioning into secondary school, we aspire that children are fluent, confident and able readers, who can access a range of texts for pleasure and enjoyment, as well as use their reading skills to unlock learning and all areas of the curriculum. We firmly believe that reading is the key to all learning and so the impact of our reading curriculum goes beyond the results of the statutory assessments.
In addition to this we will ensure that:
At Wolborough, we believe that the strategies we have place will ensure that children’s love of reading is developed through a variety of motivating books and texts. Children will have opportunities to read and listen to texts and authors from new or unfamiliar genres. These different books and texts will also provide opportunities for learning and will reinforce: word reading, grammar and punctuation, comprehension, vocabulary and spelling and spoken language.