Reading at Great Milton C of E Primary School
Intent
Reading is essential to attainment and success across all subjects. We believe that every child, regardless of their ability, background and opportunities outside of school, should become a reader. It is our intent to teach every pupil to read well, for meaning and for pleasure. We know that the ability to read is fundamental to pupils’ development as independent learners, during their time at school and beyond. We understand that reading successfully and with enjoyment is critical to children’s long term life chances. Reading is central to our ability to understand, interpret and communicate with each other and the world around us. Therefore, reading is given high priority at our school, enabling children to become enthusiastic, independent and reflective readers across a wide range and types of literature, including different text types and genres, books, posters, magazines, signs, comics and newspapers.
As a school we are committed to:
Ensuring all pupils make progress in their reading skills including decoding, accuracy, fluency, understanding and response to texts. Ensuring children are aware of their own progress and development as a reader, by placing a degree of responsibility on themselves as individuals, to aspire to be the best reader they can be. Ensuring children are able to read and enjoy a variety of different texts e.g. fiction, non-fiction, play scripts, poetry, reports and understand their purpose Creating a positive reading culture where children enjoy reading, want to read regularly and discuss their reading. Encouraging reading outside the classroom through forging strong links with home, through parental meetings, coaching sessions for parents, open house policy in regards to supporting reading at home, and regular reading in school with a variety of adults. Developing the reading experience for our children through a wide variety of high quality texts including the use of class sets of books, well stocked bookshelves in classrooms, ICT and other available media. Teaching children to apply the skills they learn in reading across the curriculum, through our well developed, enriched curriculum, utilising every possible opportunity to reinforce and practise the skill and pleasure of reading.
Phonics Implementation
Our Literacy co-ordinator and SLT have spent time researching systematic, synthetic phonics programmes approved by the DFE to provide our children with an engaging, multi sensory approach to support their understanding, knowledge and application of phonics. The scheme we follow is called Monster phonics and staff have received training on how to best deliver and support the children. There are various supportive resources that we use including a range of decodable fiction books linked to the specific phonic monster characters. Our families have also had the opportunity to sign up for the Monster phonics decodable ebooks, have some online training and share the children’s enthusiasm for the scheme.
The decodable reading books are currently being used in reception and year one for 1:1 reading and some guided reading sessions starting in term 2.
Reading Implementation
Reception
Reading in Year One
Reading in Year Two
Reading in Key Stage Two
Whole Class Guided Reading
Our whole class guided reading sessions are held daily and the majority of children will be reading the same text with differentiation of text type only used where necessary. This reflects the end of key stage assessments when all children will be expected to read the same text.
It is intended that whole class guided reading sessions give the children an opportunity to reinforce and extend reading objectives whilst reading a quality text chosen by the class teacher. This will be done by using the ‘VIPERS’ reading acronym to reinforce learning in the main areas that children need to understand to improve their comprehension of texts. These are Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval and Sequence or Summarise. This ensures that teachers ask, and children are familiar with this type of questioning.
The model for guided reading in KS2 is as follows:
Day 1 – Vocabulary. During this session children will be introduced to key vocabulary that they will learn in the text. Children will get the chance to research and use the words.
Day 2 – Reading. As a whole class the extract or book is shared and read together. Teachers model expression and phrasing. Children have the opportunity to participate in choral and echo reading to give the children the opportunity to practise expression and phrasing. Children identify vocabulary from the previous day in the text.
Day 3 – Follow up activity. Children are taught to answer a range of VIPERS question types.
Day 4 – Follow up or prediction activity. Children participate in a range of VIPERS reading activities.
Day 5 – Reading. Children read and enjoy the text for that day. Book and author talk is promoted and children read the text ‘for enjoyment’.
In KS2 the children, through guided reading and English lessons, will meet a wide range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts. Teaching will focus on developing a wide range of reading skills, e.g. generalising and making inferences by drawing on a wide range of evidence from the text.
The text chosen will offer challenge to every child in the class. It will be of a high quality and will promote authors from different countries and backgrounds. Children can follow as the text is read to them through having a book individually or with a partner. The children will undertake tasks that will deepen their understanding of the text. Sometimes these work best before the reading of the text (eg raising prior knowledge, making predictions on the basis of title and illustration), sometimes during the reading of the text (eg giving advice to a character at a point of crisis, noting personal response to an ongoing dilemma) or sometimes after (reflecting on the whole text, mapping a character’s emotional response to the journey).
Engagement with Parents
We feel strongly that the children will become great readers if school and home work together in a supportive way. Children will benefit from having strong reading role models both at home and school. We ask families to share a story, book or hear them read each day and write a comment in their reading record.
In Key Stage Two, as children grow and develop into readers we ask parents to read with their children at least three times a week and ask questions based around the VIPERS reading acronym. As children move up the school and start reading on their own, we ask children to record their own reading journey in their diaries and parents to sign once a week to agree with what the child has been reading.
Library Visits
We have links with our local library in Wheatley and are planning some visits using the village bus to promote reading. We also encourage and support the library's national reading challenge each summer.
School Lending Library
We have organised a lending library of books for our families to enjoy. Families can take as many books as they like from the collection and keep them for as long as they like. We have a range of books for everyone to access from baby books to adult literature.
Volunteer Readers
We welcome DBS cleared volunteers to read with our children. We are very lucky to receive this report within our school community and are very grateful. At times we target specific children across both key stages, for various reasons, to spend time reading with these wonderful adults.
Impact
We firmly believe that reading is the 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 world 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. Through the teaching of systematic phonics and reading enquiry our aim is for children to become fluent and confident readers who can apply their knowledge and experience to a range of texts through the key stage two curriculum. As a year six 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 their learning in all areas of the curriculum. There will be no significant gaps in the progress between different groups of pupils. The percentage of pupils working at, and above, age related expectations will be in line with the national average and will match the ambitious targets of individual children. Through reading pupils are given a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually.