READING
The English reading curriculum has been designed to ensure all learners, particularly the most disadvantaged, become confident readers, reading easily, fluently and with good understanding and to the best of their ability. Our aim is to provide children with as many opportunities to feed their imagination and open up a treasure chest of wonder, excitement and joy. We encourage children to read widely and often to increase their knowledge and understanding of themselves and the world they live in.
Early Reading
The teaching of reading begins early when children are exposed to a range of stories and poems in Nursery. This continues into reception where individual and small group reading takes place. This is in line with our phonics scheme, Little Wandle. For our reading practice sessions we use the Big Cat Collins, Little Wandle texts. The children read with a trained adult three times a week for 20 minutes in a small group.
The sessions;
- are taught by a fully trained adult to small groups of approximately six children.
- use books matched to the children’s secure phonic knowledge.
- are monitored by the class teacher, who rotates and works with each group on a regular basis.
Each reading practice session has a clear focus, so that the demands of the session do not overload the children’s working memory. The reading practice sessions have been designed to focus on three key reading skills:
- Session 1
- Decoding
- Session 2
- prosody: teaching children to read with understanding and expression
- Session 3
- comprehension: teaching children to understand the text.
Key stage 2- Whole class reading
The Whole Class Reading approach follows a five-day sequence. Each year group has a number of age appropriate high quality texts which have been chosen for their content (themes and issues) and are rich in vocabulary. The children are taught to respond to different question types such as retrieval and inference questions and higher-level questioning using the PEE strategy to respond. The children explore vocabulary within the texts ensuring they are building on decoding and deciphering skills and regularly carry out drama activities such as conscience alley, hot seating and emotion graphs to fully understand characters and in turn, authorial intent. The children also have weekly opportunities to complete comprehension style questions based on cross curricular themes.
Reading at home
It is vitally important for your child's development that you try to find the time at home to read with them. Reading for just 20 minutes per night will greatly improve your child's academic ability.
Home reading EYFS and Key Stage 1
Sharing a book daily with an adult at home is encouraged. For children in Reception and Year 1 and some in Year 2, these books will be matched to their phonics understanding. This will allow the children to practise reading with the sounds they have been learning in class or in their intervention sessions. Children will also bring home a reading for pleasure book. This is a story book for your child to enjoy with you and an opportunity to hear a range of vocabulary within a text. Your child will also bring home a reading for pleasure book. This is a story book for your child to enjoy with you and an opportunity to hear a range of vocabulary within a text. It is important to log your child's reads into their yellow reading record.
For parents | Letters and Sounds (littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk)
Home reading Key Stage 2
Sharing a book daily with an adult at home is encouraged. The children in Key stage 2 will take a book home from their class reading corner. This is a book of their choice which has captured their interest. The children can log their reads onto Boom Reader where their teacher can keep a log of how much your child has read.
Here is a poster of some useful tips that you can use when reading with your child at home.
