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 continued to use the principles of Little Wandle to develop a Whole Class Guided Reading programme which is taught in KS2.
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 such as decoding, prosody and comprehension.
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 can then be displayed in the classroom
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 will visit the library regularly and hold whole school events such as a 'Book Swap'. We have weekly staff book reccomendations where children are able to take home a book to read and posters that staff display what children's text they are currently reading.
This will play a part in strengthening our school’s reading culture.
Each class also has a selection of 'Buzz Books' these have been chosen to compliment the book spine that is read to children at the end of every day. There are three copies of each 'Buzz Book' to encourage book talk and reccomendations.
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 Buzz book displays
