Reading

"Once you learn to read, you'll forever be free."

‒ Frederick Douglass

reading


Inference-and-Deduction-KS2-PPT-NEW.pdf
JC Reading Progression Map.pdf
JC Whole school reading progression spine (1).pdf

Why do we teach Reading?

At John Clifford School, we place reading at the heart of our entire curriculum. We want all of our children to be lovers of books and lifelong readers across a wide variety of subjects, genres and authors. Our children read books that are ambitious, help to explicitly promote our Equality curriculum and reflect the diverse backgrounds of our children. As well as reading a range of classic, culturally rich texts, books are used extensively to enrich our wider curriculum subjects such as history, geography and science. This reflects our belief that reading is more than simply a set of a skills to decode unfamiliar texts; rather, a fundamental tool for learning and acquiring knowledge and understanding of the wider world.

How do we teach Reading?

A key tenet of developing understanding and engaging with the world is vocabulary development which is a priority across the school. There is a strong focus on communication and language in the Foundation Stage where staff collaborate with parents to stress the importance of quality verbal interactions with adults and listening attentively to stories. Engagement with parents is maintained throughout the school through parents reading mornings, a home-school agreement focused on engagement with reading at home and use of communication diaries. Children are taught how to engage with and discuss weekly "Focus books" which link to the children's own interests and the rest of the curriculum. This book talk continues into KS1 and beyond alongside the teaching of subject specific vocabulary which the children are expected to understand and use, strengthening knowledge and understanding in a variety of contexts.

Early reading is taught through the systematic synthetic phonics programme Essential Letters and Sounds, which is taught from the Foundation Stage, throughout KS1 and into KS2. Children are taught in focused phonics groups and their developing phonic awareness is then applied and embedded in guided reading groups where they read books which are linked directly to the phonics phases. At the end of KS1, phonic awareness is increasingly used to teach spelling and phonics continue to be used as a spelling strategy in our Sounds and Syllables programme which is used in KS2. For those children that continue to struggle with decoding, including those that arrive in our school with English as an Additional Language, phonics interventions continue to be implemented right up to Year 6.

From the end of KS1 and throughout KS2, a combination of guided group reading sessions - focusing mainly on fluency and development of reading skills – and whole-class guided reading lessons take place daily. Whole-class guided reading texts are chosen on the basis of their high degree of challenge; even for our more able readers. This helps to ensure that high ability learners continue to be challenged and progress throughout the school. The teacher's role is pivotal in scaffolding access to these texts for all children. Prior to these sessions, unfamiliar historical contexts and any new and complex vocabulary are explicitly taught to aid children's comprehension. During these reading sessions, teachers model expressive and fluent reading, establish children's comprehension through discussion and questioning and teach inference and deduction skills through modelling and questioning. Independent follow up tasks are linked to the National Curriculum content domains and provide useful assessment information for staff.

Progress in reading is assessed through a variety of methods. Children are grouped according to progress through the phonics phases. Regular running records ensure progress through book bands is maintained. Children are assessed using reading trackers linked to the National Curriculum content domains which also inform future planning. For those children who require extra support to maintain progress, extra 1:1 and group reading sessions with teachers, TAs and our team of trained Reading Volunteers are provided. We use more formal reading tests (including previous SATs papers in Year 2 and 6) to triangulate our judgements of the progress the children are making towards age-related expectations.

What are the outcomes for our children?

The overall impact of our reading curriculum is measured against and referred to as our core reading offer. This is linked directly to progress against our reading bands. We aim to ensure that children will achieve the following:

End of EYFS – “Post Pink”
End of Year 1 – Fluently reading orange level books
End of KS1 – Confidently accessing gold or white level texts
End of Year 3 – Increasing reading stamina and comprehending, inferring and deducing information from lime book bands.
End of Year 4 – Begin to develop a passion for reading as they move through grey band and into blue. Increasingly able to access a range of genres with support.
End of Year 5 & 6 – Accessing a range of burgundy and ultimately black book band texts that encompasses a wide range of genres independently.

World Book Day

World book Day - an amazing array of Potters, Seuss, Dahl and Donaldson characters display our love of reading!

What does Reading look like across school?

Home School Agreement
At John Clifford Primary and Nursery School, we ask that you read with your child three times a week to support them and allow them to develop their ever growing skills.

Reading Targets
Your child will bring home their reading diary and a reading book to share with you. As your child progresses through their reading journey, they will have reading targets placed in their diary which can help you to prompt and praise them as they read to you.

EYFS

Reading is an integral part of children's education and it is taught through a range of forms in the Early Years. Your children will bring home a reading book along with their reading diary and you can share their achievements with us by writing in their diary. Children learn many skills in these important years, including how to handle books, read from left to right and use the pictures to provide clues and context. Children benefit from daily phonics sessions as well as 1:1 reading and guided reading sessions. Teachers also model effective reading strategies during daily story time sessions and children access shared reading sessions where they are encouraged to use these methods themselves.

Key Stage One

Children will continue their reading journey with daily phonics sessions, 1:1 reading and guided reading sessions, which may occur twice weekly. Children will change their books regularly so that they can practice their growing skills using a range of text types. Your child will benefit from reading being taught throughout their curriculum and English lessons will provide exciting opportunities for looking at and sharing new texts. During this stage, the children will be developing their understanding of the texts they read and you will be able to support them in this task by using their reading targets. Teachers will model effective reading strategies and allow children to develop these through shared reading opportunities.

Key Stage Two

Children will continue to read on a 1:1 basis where their own skills will be strengthened through precise teaching. They will also continue to benefit from guided reading sessions and a holistic approach to reading where all subjects will allow opportunities for reading skills to be further developed. Children will continue to build their comprehension of a range of texts and they will be able to think about the reasons why characters may behave as they do and make links between their own experiences and those described in the texts. The children willl develop their understanding of summarising, vocabulary, retrieval, inference and prediction. For more information about this see the inference and deduction information below. Please also look at your child's reading targets in the front of their diary for ideas about how you can support their reading journey at home.

Reading Schemes and Resources

At John Clifford School we use a wide variety of resources to enable our pupils to become confident readers. These include:

FS/KS1

Dandelion Books
Oxford Reading Tree – origins, phonics etc
Songbirds (phonics)
Bug Club
Big Cat (Collins)
Real Narrative Texts
- ALL children choose books that are linked to their current phonics knowledge and taught lessons

Key Stage 2

Oxford Treetops
Oxford Reading tree
Big Cat (Collins)
Real Reading Texts

From Foundation Stage, children take home reading books linked to the phonics stage that they have been identified as working upon. Children get the opportunity to choose their own book from a wide range of texts within a relevant band. We ask parents to share these books with their children a minimum of three times each week and record this reading in their child's reading diary. In KS1, children change these books on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Children are also able to select another reading book of their choice from the classroom libraries. This may be a book that is beyond their reading ability but might be of particular interest to the child. Children should enjoy their reading and experience the delights of choosing a book that they love reading.

The School Library

There should be a balance between structured reading material and other books at each stage. We have wide range of books available to children in all classrooms and in the school library.

The library allows pupils to borrow a wide range of books from sharing/picture books to non-fiction. It is organised colour bands so that children can be guided to an appropriate range of texts as identified by their class teacher.

Children are also given the opportunity to choose any other fiction text from the library which they can share with their parents/carers at home.

The non-fiction section can be borrowed by any year group. These are organised by topic.

Our school library and KS1 reading trolleys are monitored and taken care of by our school librarians as part of our 'Little Leaders' initiative.

Useful Links

The National Curriculum for English

BBC Nursery Ryhmes

Book Trust

Love Reading