Intent

It is our intent to provide a high-quality curriculum that develops a love of reading. Using the aims set out in the Early Years Framework and National Curriculum, we develop skills in reading, which follow a clear pathway of progression, building year on year and laying the foundations for secondary school.

Children will be inspired to read and enjoy reading through exposure to a literacy-rich environment, with high quality texts from our libraries and through listening to quality age-appropriate texts in our daily Read Aloud sessions.

Children will have the opportunity to reflect on texts and make recommendations to their peers.  Our children will be encouraged to read regularly and widely at home and are rewarded for their efforts.

Implementation

Reading is taught in a variety of ways across the week:

1. Guided reading sessions - all children from Reception to year 6 take part in taught guided sessions. Guided reading sessions are planned by all teachers to teach a range of word-reading and comprehension skills and techniques which enable children to understand the meaning of what they read and develop their understanding of the vocabulary used by authors. Teachers plan to embed children’s understanding of key comprehension skills using ‘RIC’ skills. Each taught session has a planned comprehension skill focus such as Retrieval, Interpret or Choice and children’s independent activities also provide opportunities to practise and embed these skills. 

2. Shared reads form part of our writing sessions, where children are exposed to high quality model texts related to the genre they are learning about.  The teacher models fluent reading, then unpicks the text with the children in small chunks as appropriate for their age. In this way, children’s comprehension and vocabulary are further strengthened and embedded. 

3. Daily Read Aloud sessions, where the teacher shares age-appropriate texts as recommended in the Pie Corbet Reading Spine, including traditional tales, poems and classic novels.  This is an enjoyable session, where children listen to texts from well-respected authors and have meaningful discussions around plot, characters and vocabulary.

4.  Home Reading -all children are expected to read at home and are encouraged to do so through our reading reward scheme. We use a variety of different reading schemes to provide a wide variety of appropriate quality texts for children to read covering all genres.  Schemes incorporated into our reading provision include Bug Club Phonics (in Early Years and KS1 aligned to their phonics ability), Oxford Reading Tree, The Pie Corbett Reading Spine, as well as other current and popular texts. All books are ‘Book Banded’ to ensure progression and challenge for all children. Once children are fluent readers, they are encouraged to choose texts according to their reading preferences and to develop reading for pleasure.

Assessment in reading is ongoing, with teachers identifying gaps within each session of guided reading.  In year 2 and KS2 children are assessed termly, using statutory past papers and PIRA tests.  The results are used to inform future planning and any interventions such as Rapid Reader (Pearson) that may be necessary to help children to catch up.

Impact

Our reading curriculum will enable the children to:

• Enjoy reading and engage in it for pleasure.
• Confidently discuss texts, sharing opinions on what they read
• Enjoy reading and writing across a range of genres
• Become confident, fluent readers who realise the importance of reading for pleasure along with reading for information and knowledge
• Use their skills in reading to support learning in other areas of the curriculum
• Develop reading and comprehension skills in line with age-related expectations, which will also lay the foundations for transition to secondary school, so children can access all areas of their learning

Tips for Supporting Reading at Home:

Click on the links below for useful advice from Book Trust