Reading

Reading is an essential skill for life and we want our children to leave school with a love of reading. Children need to see adults loving books, so school staff are encouraged to share their love of reading with the children.

EYFS and KS1

• We teach children to decode words using a very structured and focused approach to synthetic phonics following the FFT Success For All programme.  This work is in differentiated groups and tailored to the specific needs and progress of pupils.
• As soon as the children have moved through the very early stages of phonics, they are able to practise their skills by reading and taking home books from our 'Book Banded' reading scheme. This scheme has a wide range of different texts from various publishers, designed to give children experience of a variety of reading genres, with fiction and non-fiction books within each level.
• Alongside phonics teaching, children are read to daily from a range of texts with an emphasis on comprehension at different levels (word, sentence and text). This is an opportunity for teachers to model the act of being a fluent reader. Teachers demonstrate to the class by ‘thinking aloud’ the skills required to be a reader.
• Guided reading with a Teacher or Teaching Assistant takes place daily in small groups with texts matched carefully to the needs of pupils in order to provide some challenge for all. Differentiated questions are planned around the text to encourage the children to enjoy, understand, discuss and analyse the written word in a supported environment.
• Children working below age-related expectations are given additional support within smaller groups and individually.

KS2

• There is a move towards more whole-class based reading as an effective way of exploring the different content domains found in the National Curriculum, allowing children to break down questions into key skills (following the VIPERS acronym) and to understand how they are required to approach a text.
• At times, and particularly when additional intervention is required, children are still taught in smaller guided groups or individually to support them in making progress towards age related expectations.
• Once children in KS2 can read fluently and with good understanding, they self-select books for independent reading from the class collections and are enrolled in Accelerated Reader, an online programme which provides a fun comprehension quiz for each time they have finished reading a book. Data from the associated software is used by teachers to encourage, manage and monitor children’s reading practice.