Reading
In reception and Year 1 daily phonics supports the development of early reading skills (see separate Intent, Implementation and Impact for Phonics).
In Year 2 our children begin the academic year with a focus on their fluency development. Using the ELS Fluency scheme we have 2 sessions a week purely focussing on fluency development. These sessions aim to develop our children's accuracy, automaticity and prosody through carefully modelled reading that is shared with the children. The children participate orally with their teacher, echoing back and rehearsing the text with a partner. Repeated reading within each session is the main strategy to support fluency development. As the year progresses, our Year 2 children move further towards their comprehension and the content of reading lessons has more focus on understanding using Literacy Shed + materials.
In Years 3 and 4 whole class reading sessions provide our children with opportunities to develop word reading and comprehension skills. Our teachers incorporate different methods and strategies to develop fluency in these sessions along with incorporating all strands of reading comprehension. Literacy Shed + texts are used for our whole class reading. Using these texts ensures consistency across the school for our whole class reading lessons. The texts are appropriately pitched for each year group and have 3 levels across the year allowing for the complexity of the texts to develop as the year progresses. Reading journals are used as a way of recording the comprehension work that is carried out by the children.
In addition to the reading opportunities outlined above, a diverse range of reading opportunities are embedded across our curriculum in all year groups. Quality texts are used as a lead into many writing opportunities where new vocabulary can be learnt and applied. Our reading spine has been carefully developed to offer quality texts that fit with Year Group topics to engage and inspire our children. Daily story times are timetabled in all year groups where whole class texts (from our reading spine) are shared with the children giving time to listen to and enjoy stories, developing the love of reading.
Vulnerable groups and those needing additional reading support are identified by class teachers and reading interventions are put in place to support the development of their reading. This may be small group comprehension work or additional daily reading to develop fluency and build confidence.
Our ‘individual readers’ reading scheme offers a wide range of texts for the children to choose from. These books are coloured banded so progression is clear. In Reception and Year 1 individual reading books are matched to the phonic level that the children have been taught. Books are kept within classrooms (for KS2 just outside the classrooms) so the Year 2, 3 and 4 children are easily able to choose their own book, from the level that they are currently working. This gives the children the freedom to choose a book that is of interest to them.
Reading is celebrated at Templefield and there are many opportunities for the children to develop and enhance their love of reading across the school year. We have a fantastic library that all children visit weekly to share stories and take out books. We celebrate world book day with themed activities for example multi-cultural books or traditional tales. We promote reading for pleasure in different ways from year to year whether it be a sponsored readathon, a literature festival or visits to our local library.
Reading at home is a valuable part of the reading experience for our pupils. We encourage children to read at home everyday using their individual reading books. All children have the opportunity to earn raffle tickets for a half termly prize draw based on their reading frequency at home each week. We support our parents with workshops demonstrating ways to support reading with their children at home. The VIPERS framework is shared with parents to give examples of questions to support comprehension development.
Our Reading Spine
Our Reading Spine has been carefully researched and considered using the key principles from ‘Reading Reconsidered’ by Doug Lemov along with taking recommendations from Pie Corbett’s reading spine. The quality texts chosen link to our topics and each year group has a set of class readers that will be used in our daily story times.
e have ensured our selected texts represent a wide range of diversity and are engaging to encourage a love for reading. A diet of fiction and non-fiction is promoted within our Reading Spine.
Access our Reading Spines here...
Additional Information
English PolicyVIPERS - Advice for supporting Reading Comprehension