Reading is at the heart of our curriculum, with our aim to instil a love of reading in every child. The class teacher regularly reads to children, carefully selecting high quality texts, which thoroughly engage both the children and the teachers!

 

Children in the younger classes ALL read  regularly to either the teacher or the Teaching Assistant. Children have the opportunity to change their reading books daily. Reading is incorporated into all the subjects of the curriculum, with additional Guided Reading sessions in Science.

 

Our reading scheme is predominately the OXFORD READING TREE Scheme, however we continue to add and extend our offer to ensure all of our children are able to find interesting texts that they both enjoy and are keen to read.

 

The teaching of reading and comprehension skills takes place every day within Guided Reading sessions. These sessions are delivered at different times of the day in each class.  Teachers group children and select Reading Materials to suit each group. This gives every child an opportunity to work in a small teacher led group to develop their reading and text comprehension skills through questioning and discussion.

 

Each child has a reading book, which is from our book band scheme. The books get progressively harder as the children progress through the colours until they become a ‘free reader’. The teacher carries out a ‘book band check’ at least every half term to ensure that the books are still the correct level of challenge for the readers. The children love the sense of achievement as they move up through the scheme. The expectation is that they will read at least 3 times a week at home. Reading is recorded in their reading record, which is monitored by the class teacher.

 

For children who struggle with reading, we run a number of reading interventions including: Letters and Sounds, for children with gaps in their phonics knowledge; a range of schemes  which concentrate on sight recognition of the high frequency words and Lexia reading, a computer program that identifies particular areas of need and tailors the support for that area. We also have parent readers who volunteer to listen to children read. Interventions take place daily within school and are run by skilled teaching assistants and supported by the reading leader.

 

We have a well-stocked school library run by our school librarians, which children are able to visit regularly. We are always keen to invite parents in to school to support our busy librarians! Children really enjoy their visits to the library and they are taught to be able to find books that they will enjoy from authors they know and new authors as well as using mainly the Dewey system to look up information books around a given subject.

 

At least once a year we run a book week, which celebrates reading and the love of books. Throughout the week, there are additional reading opportunities, author visits, competitions and a focus for the week on enjoying reading and getting lost in a great book!

 

Our children achieve well in reading and we are proud to be a school that works hard to ensure children leave school being confident readers with a love of literature.