Reading

Reading Intent

At Pencoys, we aim to ensure that every child will leave Year 6 as a confident reader. We aim to instil a love of reading and open up children’s worlds to the opportunities that books and quality literature can offer. We want our children to have developed good habits as readers, reading for pleasure as well as being able to use reading skills to access the whole curriculum. We understand the intrinsic links between speaking, listening, reading and writing; therefore we place a strong emphasis on talking about the books and the texts they read and write about.

“I love reading because you get to visit places you have never been before, like the arctic that we are studying in geography.” Year 5 pupil

We have carefully planned a broad range of literature that children will experience throughout their time at Pencoys. These texts not only meet the requirements of the reading objectives in the National Curriculum but broaden the children’s minds and experiences culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. A careful consideration has been placed on choosing texts by quality authors and that include a range of characters that reflect the diverse community that we are a part of, locally, nationally and globally.

“Reading is like watching a film on television but in your mind.” Year 6 pupil

Our choice of books for our reading curriculum has been chosen to ensure there is variety not only in the authors that have written them, but in the genres, characters, plot structures, tenses, style and settings (both geographically and chronologically). Children learn and develop their reading skills through these carefully chosen texts but also learn about the wider world. We understand that key to comprehending texts is having the necessary subject knowledge to do so. The texts support our humanities-based curriculum and the development of subject knowledge required of children so that they are ready for the KS3 curriculum and beyond.

NC Aims for English:

The national curriculum for English aims to ensure that all pupils:

read easily, fluently and with good understanding
develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas
are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate.

Implementation:

EYFS

In EYFS the literacy area of learning is included within continuous provision and gives children opportunities to begin to develop the skills, as well as the engagement and motivation, needed to enable them to become readers and writers. In addition, when they are ready, children are introduced to the basics of sentence writing, working in small groups with an adult.

A large part of children’s literacy learning in EYFS is focused on developing a love of books: children are read to daily and are encouraged to share books. Higher-level vocabulary from class books is shared with the children and this is modelled by staff in their interactions with the children. Children also have a reading book to take home and read on a 1:1 basis with staff each week. Dressing up and role play are linked to stories throughout the year.

In the Early Years Foundation Stage, children are taught phonics every day through the Read, Write, Inc (RWI) programme.

KS1 and 2

Children will continue to develop reading skills through our rigorous approach to the teaching of synthetic phonics. (Read more on our phonics page.) The children also broaden their literary knowledge and develop their love of reading through carefully chosen texts that are shared as a class every day. Each child will also choose a text from our library to take home each week.

Once children have the necessary skills to read independently, normally during Year 2 (see reading flowchart), they move to a guided reading session to further develop their reading and comprehension skills. During these sessions, children are taught, and given opportunities to practise a range of skills using the VIPERS acronym: Vocabulary, Infer, Predict, Explain, Retrieve, Summarise. The acquisition of a broad range of vocabulary is vital to reading; therefore, as a school, we consciously plan for the deliberate practice of vocabulary development in reading lessons and across the whole curriculum. Teachers use a range of research-based strategies to improve children’s fluency, acquisition of language and comprehension.

To encourage children to develop a love of reading, children have opportunities to choose their own reading books from the school library. To provide further engagement and motivation for reading, we use the Accelerated Reader programme. Children spend time each week reading their own choice of books from a selection chosen to meet their ability. After reading each book, children complete an online quiz which gives them feedback on their reading. Accelerated Reader supports in being able to promote and reward reading for pleasure, it gives teachers the information they need to monitor students’ reading practice and to make informed decisions to guide pupils’ future learning. Teachers also act as role models in their enthusiasm for reading and writing by keeping up-to-date with current quality children’s literature. As well as constantly reflecting on and refining our reading curriculum, this is shared with children in our school library or through themed days and weeks throughout the year. We award Hot Reader certificates each half term to those children that reach their target (set at their own level).

Reading Long Term Plan

Please click on the Pdf below to see the overview of Guided Reading texts:

Reading LTP Pencoys

Impact

Through pupil conferencing, lesson observations, staff feedback and book looks we find:

Children of all ages are excited to talk about their favourite books and authors and can make book recommendations.

Children quickly adopt new vocabulary and develop their language skills which are applied across the curriculum.
Children can apply spelling rules and grammatical concepts in their independent writing.
Children are taught reading and writing progressively using inclusive approaches and at a pace appropriate to each individual child.
Progress is reflected within a unit of work from a child’s initial cold task to the final independent hot task.

By the end of their primary education our children will:

have experienced and be able to discuss their reading across a range of modern and classic stories.

be able to write clearly and accurately and adapt their language and style for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.
make good and better progress from their starting points to achieve their full potential.
Understand the importance of their literacy skills to enable them to continue their learning in Secondary Education and to support them with their future careers.