Reading

Intent

Reading is at the heart of everything we do at Callington Primary School and forms the core of our curriculum. We intend to foster a love of reading for all and aim to equip our children with the necessary skills to read fluently, and with confidence, both for pleasure and for purpose. We intend to encourage all pupils to read widely across both fiction and non- fiction in order to : develop their knowledge and understanding of both themselves and the ever changing world in which they live; develop an appreciation and love of reading ; to gain knowledge across the curriculum and to develop their comprehension skills.

Implementation

We also know how important it is to have good ‘role models’ in reading and that a great deal of enjoyment can come from listening to stories as well as learning. For this reason, we ensure our teachers read to our children daily straight after lunch.  As a school, we have selected core texts/ authors, which we passionately believe all children should be exposed to by the time they leave primary school. Therefore, each year group will explore an author or novel per half term. Both traditional and modern stories have been selected due to their underlying patterns, range of protagonists, vocabulary, challenge and themes to ensure children encounter others whose experiences and perspectives are both similar to and different from their own.

Phonics

Phonics skills are actively taught daily throughout Year R, 1 and 2. In the Nursery children do not participate in formal phonics sessions, instead they are exposed to a range of phonological awareness activities to develop the way they hear different sounds. We are using Read Write Inc. as our phonics scheme to provide a clearly defined, incremental sequence to the teaching of systematic, synthetic phonics. The scheme ensures that children are exposed to grapheme and phoneme correspondences in a systematic and progressive way. Read Write inc is a highly successful phonics complete literacy programme which helps all children learn to read fluently and at speed so they can focus on developing their skills in comprehension, vocabulary and spelling.

We start teaching the programme in our Reception classes and children continue until they have worked their way through the whole reading scheme, usually this is during Year One or Two.In EYFS all children will learn how to ‘read’ and ‘write’ all of the sounds in Set 1 and Set 2 then taught how to blend these into words.  We assess all children on the scheme every six weeks  to ensure that they are placed in the correct group for their reading ability and challenge point.  This also allows us to quickly identify any children who needs support to access the learning at the level of the group.  If this arises, we provide one-to-one tutoring for the child in accordance with the Read, Write Inc scheme to help individuals make rapid progress.  Groups are taught by either a teacher or a TA who have had Read, Write Inc Phonics training. 

In Year 1 in the summer term, children are required by the DfE to undertake a phonics screening test. This is completed 1-to-1 with their teacher and is a familiar activity for the children. If children do not meet the required standard they would be required to re-take in Class 2 (statutory process from DfE).

Pupils will continue to have access to the Read Write Inc. programme, if required, in KS2 if their decoding skills are not secure at the end of Key Stage 1.

Please see more information about the teaching of Read Write Inc. on the following webpage

Guided Reading

Children in Reception and KS1 take part in daily 'Read Write Inc. sessions which include a speed sounds (phonics) session and also a daily guided reading session in the form of their ' storybook sessions'. Each storybook is matched to the sounds children can already read, which sets them up for success and helps to build their confidence with reading.  It is through the storybooks we teach children red words, which are irregular words that are not phonetically plausible and cannot be sounded out (Fred talked).  Every storybook is taught in the same way, children practise reading the green words in the story and also the red words before they begin to read the book.  Children will then read the book several times to help build their fluency and comprehension skills before taking it home to read and further develop their fluency. Additionally, children also take a 'book bag book' home which has not been read in school time and allows them to apply their learnt sounds in a new book. 

All children in KS2 take part in daily, 30 minute guided readings sessions. We use an approach built around the VIPERS skills (vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval and sequence/summary (KS2)) to explicitly teach the key skills of reading comprehension to children and immerse them in a wide range of texts.

Once children in Year Two have completed our 'Read Write Inc. programme, they will start guided reading sessions based around the above approach. Each of these  sessions focusses on an explicitly taught VIPERS skill. Each week a high quality, appropriately challenging text is chosen as a focus, rotating between fiction, non-fiction, poetry and song. Application of phonics skills are applied throughout sessions and fluency is developed.

In KS2, on a Monday and Friday, guided reading sessions are focussed on the novel which is being read to the children every afternoon that half term and is used as a stimulus for deeper thinking. Each session starts with a recap of key events, themes and developments that have happened during the week’s reading in order to ensure children are experts in the text.   During these sessions, the explicitly taught skills which teachers focus upon are explanation, prediction, summary and sequencing.  We feel these skills are best taught using a full story which children are au fait using their concrete background knowledge of the text.

On a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday guided reading sessions are focussed on a separate text, which is taken from our school reading spine. Each year group has carefully selected texts which cover all genres: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, songs and picture books as well as progression, diversity and challenge. Often, links to our foundation subjects are exploited. Fluency practice is built into these sessions and children are exposed to a range of activities to develop rapid, efficient and accurate word recognition skills as well as expressive, oral reading. Other skills taught in these sessions include: vocabulary, inference and retrieval. 

Banded Reading Books

The school uses a variety of reading schemes to provide a wide variety of appropriate, quality texts for children. These have been built up over the years and are updated to ensure our children have a rich and diverse reading experience that covers all reading genres. The schemes incorporated into our reading provision include: Collins Big Cat and some novels, specifically chosen and banded by teachers. All books are ‘Book Banded’ in order to ensure progression and challenge for all children.

For all children taking part in our Read Write Inc programme, each child is sent home with a fully decodable book from the Read Write Inc. scheme containing the letter sounds and tricky words they are currently learning in their sessions. The intention is that our children will be able to read books more confidently, using the phonemes they have learnt; this will also help parents to be more informed about the phonemes their child can recognise and use. Therefore, these books are selected by a trained teacher or teaching assistant within Read Write Inc sessions to ensure books are pitched appropriately and follow our scheme.

Once a child has completed the Read Write Inc. programme, they will be able to select their own reading books ( from our banded books) as they will be able to fully decode and are ready to apply these skills to more challenging texts.

In Key Stage 2, children can select their own reading books; the reading bands they are selecting from are monitored regularly by the class teacher, using a fluency assessment from Collins. The assessment ensures that our children are accessing books at an instructional level by measuring the number of words read correct by minute and children’s reading speed. This is correlated to the expected standard to each year group and then matched to the appropriate band. Fluency assessments take place and are tracked each term. This information is used to identify next steps for guided reading sessions and those children who need more targeted supported through interventions. 

These books are read by children on a Tuesday and Thursday during school time. During these sessions, the class teacher and teaching assistant will hear children read, prioritising those who are reading below age related expectations supporting all children to become confident and fluent readers.

All children are expected to take home these banded reading books and read as regularly as possible. Reading is to be recorded in a reading diary which is shared as a link between home and the class teacher.

As a school, we are passionate about helping children to develop a love for reading. We believe this love for reading is a stepping stone to becoming an enthusiastic learner and a confident reader, writer and speaker. To support parents and children to broaden their reading horizons and ensure children are reading a range of high quality text appropriate to their age at home, we have created a recommended reads list for each year group. These are shared with parents at our Coffee Morning and are available on our website. A selection of these are available within classrooms for children to borrow. 

Further Enrichment

• We are fortunate to have our own library and the children have the opportunity once a week to choose a book to take home to read for pleasure. The library is regularly updated with new books to ensure that the choice remains current, relevant and in condition.

• We strive to create a stimulating and exciting reading environment that encourages a love for reading. Every classroom has a reading display which celebrates reading in the classroom and children have access to a reading area in which they can choose and borrow engaging and high quality texts. We recently carried out a sponsored reading event and raised over £3000 which was used to purchase new, high quality books for class reading areas.

• Throughout the year, we lead several initiatives that help to build up a stimulating and exciting reading culture throughout the school.  These include: read a million stories campaign, doorways into reading, author visits, world book day, town library summer reading challenge and our Year 2 and Year 6 children are involved the Children’s Book Award.

• Furthermore, writing lessons are based on an approach that focusses on the development of word and sentence level understanding with many activities making use of skills that will enhance pupils’ comprehension of the written language. 

Impact

Children leave Callington with the ability to read widely and often, with fluency and comprehension appropriate to their age but most importantly, with the desire to read for pleasure. Children are able to use their learnt ‘Vipers’ skills to apply their understanding when reading and engaging with a range of texts. Children enjoy reading, feel safe when reading, feel creative and inspired by the books, characters and authors they encounter throughout their time at primary school. As a result of high quality teaching and exposure to a diverse range of reading experiences, children achieve well; this is reflected in results from national tests that meet government expectations and from listening to their reading and talking to children.

Enrichment