BEAford community primary & nursery Academy

Vision for Reading

 

Vision

At Beaford Community Primary and Nursery School, we are continually striving to create ways that develop a lifelong love of reading for all of our pupils.  We expose pupils to a range of good quality literature from across all curriculum areas, in order to support the development of their interests, understanding and aspirations.

Intent

Reading is a key life skill and we strive to embed a culture of reading into the core of what we do, providing opportunities for children to read both independently and aloud as well as allowing them the chance to discuss and recommend books they have read to their peers. Reading and quality literature is implicitly interwoven into our curriculum through the use of key texts to expose our children to various genres and famous authors and to enhance the variety of exciting topics that we teach. By the end of their time at primary school, all children should be able to read fluently, and with confidence, in any subject in their forthcoming secondary education.

To achieve this, we intend to encourage all pupils to read widely across both fiction, non-fiction and poetry to develop knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live; to establish an appreciation and love of reading; to gain knowledge across the curriculum; develop their comprehension skills.

Implementation

Early Reading, Phonics and decoding: 

At Beaford, we teach early ready through the Read Write Inc systematic synthetic phonics programme.

What is Read Write Inc?

Read Write Inc (RWI) is a systematic synthetics phonics programme (SSP) which aims to help all children learn to read fluently and at speed so they can focus on developing their skills in comprehension, vocabulary and spelling.

How will RWI be taught to my child?

RWI works on the principle of ensuring that your child’s phonics teacher knows the exact sounds to target through careful and regular phonic assessments.

In order for us to target your child’s phonic level, following the assessments, your child will be put into a phonics group. It is important to emphasise that these groups are fluid and your child may move group depending on their progress.

 

Reception:

The focus of learning in Reception is to enable all children to learn how to ‘read’ the sounds in words and how those sounds can be written down.

Reading 

The children will:

• learn 44 sounds and the corresponding letters/letter groups using simple picture prompts
• learn to read words using Fred talk and sound blending
• read from a range of storybooks and non-fictions books matched to their phonic knowledge
• work well with partners
• develop comprehension skills in stories by answering 'Find It' and 'Prove It' discussion questions

Writing 

The children will:

• learn to write and form the letters/letter groups which represent the 44 sounds with the help of fun phrases
• learn to write words by using Fred Talk
• learn to build sentences by practising sentences out loud before they write 

Talking: 

The children will work in pairs so that they:

• answer every question
• practise every activity with their partner
• take turns in talking and reading to each other
• develop ambitious vocabulary

 

Year One & Year Two 

The same cycle and approach to teaching RWI continues in Year One and Year Two, and beyond where appropriate and needed. The children will continue to be assessed and grouped to match their phonics levels.

By this stage, most children will be progressing through more complex sounds and they will continue to access reading texts that are matched to their phonic sound knowledge.

Once children become fluent and speedy readers, they will move off the RWI phonics programme onto a ‘Fred Teaching group’ which are books and extracts that are not specifically linked to phonic sounds taught and focus more on comprehension skills. They will also be taking accelerated reader books home.

 

One of the most important aspects of following the RWI scheme and the fundamental practise of home-learning support is that your child will be sent home with a book level that matches their phonic level. This means that your child should be able to fluently read the book that they are coming home with. They would have been taught and focused on the sounds within that book during the week and should have secure previous phonic knowledge to support them in accurately reading the book. The aim of reading this book at home is for enjoyment and confidence building!

Independent reading across our school - Reading at ‘just the right level’: 

Children’s reading books are closely matched to their developing phonic knowledge through the use of Read Write Inc books and other phonetically decodable texts throughout EYFS and Year 1. Once children are confidently reading, they move on to the Accelerated Reader (AR) programme and books within their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). ZPD is the range of books that will challenge a child without causing frustration or loss of motivation. Each child will receive a personalised ZPD, or reading range, after taking a Star Reading test. Once children complete a book within their reading range, they also take quizzes to check their comprehension of the book read. Reading for pleasure is encouraged through regularly promoting books during assemblies to the while school and within each class and having these accessible on display. Books to encourage further reading about a topic are also displayed within the classrooms.

 

Key class texts:

Class texts are carefully selected to ensure children are part of a shared culture through reading books that progress and build through the school –this may be in building knowledge, empathy or shared experience of key authors. Class texts are selected to ensure children are exposed to different plagues in reading (archaic texts, non-linear time sequence texts, complexity of the narrator texts, complexity of plot/symbolism texts, resistant texts) through a supported environment so children will be more confident, resilient and fluent when reading these more challenging book types on their own. We pair non-fiction and poetry with our class texts to ensure the absorption rate of understanding of all texts increase.  i.e. When reading Goodnight Mr Tom, you might read non-fiction texts about World War 2 or bomb shelters, you might engage in poetry ‘Flanders Fields’ etc to aid the understanding of all. This approach was based on research from Doug Lemov, Colleen Driggs and Erica Woolway in their book: Reading Reconsidered.

Another way we ensure all children can be part of this shared culture and enjoyment of a class novel is a visual working wall to help children to understand the story and characters and equalise the opportunity for all children to have the lightbulb moment that otherwise only some of the class are going to have when listening to a class text. This approach is informed by research from Ashley Booth: The Teaching Booth Blog.

Whole Class Reading in Key Stage 2:

In Key Stage 2, we have 4 whole class reading sessions a week. 3 reading sessions are on linked texts from Ashley Booth’s The Teaching Booth: KS2 Reading Curriculum. These sessions ensure that the children are exposed to a wide variety of texts and genres in their reading diet from looking at classic children’s books, to unpicking the meaning of a Disney song, to learning about life cycles, poetry and picture books aimed for children in KS2. The main skills covered in these sessions is reading outloud with a focus on fluency, inference and retrieval. The lessons begin with the reading. Teachers might read some of the text for modelling purposes, but children do the majority of the reading aloud. The text should always be read aloud focusing on a small section to practise reading with fluency. This is followed by a short retrieval quiz. After this, any unfamiliar or potentially limiting vocabulary is explored alongside pictures/visuals for a deeper understanding. Children then answer a range of inference and retrieval questions which take three forms: individual thinking, partnered talk and solo work.

Another whole class reading session is based on our class text (which is read to the children every day at a separate point from our whole class reading sessions). This ensures children have access to, and study a text in its entirety from start to finish and build the skill of following a text through and reading for pleasure. We also use these lessons to focus on the skills of prediction and summary.

The children in KS2 also read independently update any AR quizzes and recommend books to their peers at other points throughout the week.

Summative Assessments 

Summative assessments are used termly. Teachers combine their week-to-week assessments with the summative test results ( e.g. past SATS papers, Cornerstones tests and AR Star Reading Tests) to determine whether a child is working within age-related expectations, above or below. These judgements, for the most part, are focused on the quality of the written outcomes pupils give after structured teaching within the agreed reading skills. If tests are used, care is taken to ensure that pupils are prepared appropriately for the test, and any barriers to accessing these are removed.

Teaching is monitored closely through a range of strategies including lesson observations, pupil voice activities and the analysis of data.  Pupil progress meetings also ensure progress is monitored and intervention is provided to enable pupils to be on track to meet year group expectations.

Impact

The impact of reading teaching is monitored closely through a range of strategies including: AR STAR tests, AR comprehension quizzes and termly summative tests as well as through internal moderation and pupil progress meetings.

• Pupils will read a wide range of books for pleasure which are well matched to their zone of proximal reading development. They will read regularly for information and enjoyment across a range of genres.
• Intervention is ensuring the lowest 20% are making fast progress in reading.
• Children of all abilities will be able to overcome a challenge and succeed in all reading lessons.
• Parents will be clear about the age-related expectations for reading and have a clear understanding of how to support their child at home.
• Pupils are able to talk about the work of a range of different authors. 
• The % of pupils working at ARE within each year group will be at least in line with national averages.
• The will be no significant gaps in the progress of different groups of pupils.
• The % of pupils working at Greater Depth within each year group will be at least in line with national averages