Reading

Intent

At Kippax Ash Tree, we strive to be an outstanding reading school where children read for pleasure and are exposed to a vast, varied and exciting diet of literature. This ranges from classic to contemporary, therefore helping to build the strong cultural capital which we desire for our students. Our vision and approaches aim to meet every child’s individual reading need through the delivery of high- quality, whole class and small group teaching sessions, regular opportunities for individual reading and also time to sit back and enjoy listening to a story. These reading experiences are part of our daily culture. We intend for our children to be able to articulate their favourite genres and authors, comment on author technique and make connections with other texts they have read. We also hold debates about critical issues that arise within a text and, most importantly, we intend for them leave us with a lifelong love of reading.

At Kippax Ash Tree we promote a love of reading across the school and engage children and their families with the aim of generating a long-term love of reading. Our curriculum has books at it's heart. We want everyone at Ash Tree to read – not just for learning, but also for enjoyment. Reading is a fundamental skill that underpins all areas of learning, and a love of reading is a key factor in long term academic success.

Implementation

Read Write Inc.

In addition to daily literacy lessons, children excel in early reading through the use of the Read Write Inc. (RWI) programme from Reception – Year 2 and continue to develop a range of reading skills, as well as a love of reading through Book Talk. At Ash Tee, we strive to teach children to read effectively with pace through the delivery of the Read Write Inc. Phonics programme which includes teaching synthetic phonics, sight vocabulary, decoding and segmenting sounds for spelling.

Through the RWI phonics program, children are taught to:

• Read a series of books with a focus on decoding and high frequency word recognition
• Re-read the same text for a number of consecutive days to improve fluency of reading
• Engage with a variety of books including narrative and non-fiction
• Segment sounds for spelling

Children are taught in small groups that reflect their phonic ability and reading fluency. In these groups, children are introduced to 44 common sounds in the English language and are taught how to blend these sounds together in order to read words. Once children have a quick recall of Set 1 sounds and are able to blend with these, they then move on to reading stories and texts containing these sounds. Once secure, children learn Set 2 and Set 3 sounds and then read texts with increasingly more complex sounds and graphemes. Throughout this process there is a focus on comprehension, reading with expression and reading for enjoyment. Children are regularly assessed to ensure that learners are reading books closely matched to their increasing phonics knowledge. 

EYFS and Key Stage One Talk Through Stories:

Talk Through Stories is for all children, but it is especially for children who do not come from a language rich home. It is designed to extend and deepen children’s vocabulary so that they can understand the books they will soon be able to read for themselves. The programme is planned specifically and systematically – step by step – to develop children's vocabulary.

Talk Through Stories is taught in two week cycles. In Story week, we help children to get to know the story really well: the plot, the characters, and their actions and motives. In Vocabulary week, we explore eight words from the story. These words have been specifically selected to develop children’s understanding of each word in the context of their everyday lives.

Key Stage Two Read to Succeed (Whole Class Reading):

During our whole-class reading sessions, children are exposed to a variety of carefully chosen texts. Each lesson provides modelling, demonstration and practising of reading aloud with fluency and expression, exploration into vocabulary and opportunities to develop comprehension skills.

• Each pupil has their own copy of the text.
• All pupils in the classroom will be accessing narrative, non-fiction or poetry at the same time.
• Pupils are exposed to a range of strategies to develop their fluency skills and modelled examples of intonation.
• Each lesson begins with a ‘Vik’s Vocabulary’ section to clarify key vocabulary that is coming up in the text to ensure understanding and retain pace during reading aloud.
• Opportunities to summarise, predict, connect and explain are regular features of the lesson, enabling pupils to deepen their understanding of the text.

Home Readers:

Each child takes home a Reading Record, where they are encouraged to read on a daily basis and record comments. Books sent home to read link to the phonics sound being learnt and also to the colour book band level which the children are currently reading at. Children are expected to ‘Strive for 5’ – reading a minimum of 5 times out of school and are also challenged to read 100 books before they finish KS1 and KS2.

Reading Buddies:

In order to raise the profile of reading in our school, we have a fabulous team of KS2 reading buddies who have been coupled up with a child in a younger year group. They spend time listening to their allocated buddy, asking questions to aid comprehension and also help with decoding skills and working out the meaning of unfamiliar words. The buddies have been selected from our PP and more vulnerable groups to encourage a love of reading and to give them as many opportunities as possible.

Libraries:

We have the privilege of having two libraries within school: one for EYFS/KS1 and one for KS2. Our EYFS/KS1 library has a varied collection of books sorted into baskets containing similar themes. We have baskets of books appealing to many different interests of our younger children and each child makes a weekly visit with their teachers to share some of our ‘Recommended Reads’ or new books. Our KS2 library is organised into fiction, non-fiction and poetry. The non-fiction section has been classified into topics whilst the fiction section has been sorted into genres so that children are able to choose from a wide range of literature, ensuring a varied reading diet. Our libraries are open at the end of each school day for our Ash Tree families to visit alongside their child and loan a book.

Impact

Our reading curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression based on the best research. We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods: formative assessment of small groups during Reading lessons; in-depth assessment records kept for each individual in school; assessment data being used to close gaps in understanding and skills for all learners.