Reading at St Gerard’s Catholic Primary School

Vision Statement for Reading 

At St Gerard’s Catholic Primary School, we value reading as an essential life skill that empowers children to achieve their full potential. We recognise that the ability to read is a cornerstone of future success, therefore we are dedicated to ensuring that all of our children become fluent and confident readers.

Intent

Reading is key to opening up life long opportunities and therefore is central to all that we do at St Gerard’s. From the earliest stages, pupils are provided with the basic skills required to
communicate effectively when reading, ensuring fluency and independence. All pupils are exposed to high quality texts, each class has a high-profile reading area and teachers model good reading practice to develop a love of reading and expand minds.

Implementation

In EYFS, children are encouraged to foster a love of reading through the sharing of quality texts during shared reading and through carefully crafted learning contexts. 

Throughout Nursery, children are given every opportunity to develop their spoken language through adult interaction and to be exposed to a wide range of quality texts through teacher story time. This is continued in Reception and in addition to this, we teach our children to read using systematic synthetic phonics. We utilise the Sounds-Write Programme for teaching phonics in Reception, Key Stage 1 and for intervention within Key Stage Two.

We have organised and purchased a wide range of reading books to match the progression of the Sounds-Write scheme. We believe that it is important to expose our children to a range of texts with different fonts, contents and style. Some are shorter, but with interesting content to talk about. Some of our books are published by Sounds-Write and they contain more text on each page, helping our children to develop stamina and fluency in their reading. Through Reception, Key Stage One and for struggling readers within Key Stage Two, the books that children take home will contain 90% of words containing sounds that the children already know and can blend. This ensures that they are given the opportunity to practise the skill of blending to read and develop reading fluency, whilst they are still securing their knowledge of the phonics code. 

Throughout this learning process pupils and parents are encouraged to practise these skills at home; children are encouraged to say the sounds and blend them to read the words.

READING SCHEMES USED WITHIN SCHOOL

Reception – Year 2 

Until children have a secure knowledge of the phonics code and can blend these sounds to read a range of mono and polysyllabic words, they read from our phonics-schemed books. These are labelled and organised in a progressive way to match our Sounds~Write scheme. The books have been carefully selected from the following schemes to ensure that they include words containing the appropriate sounds: 

Sounds Write Unit Books 

Dandelion Launchers

Dandelion Readers 

Once children have secured their knowledge of the phonic code and can blend effectively, they will be moved on to read books within book bands or from our school library. Teachers recognise when pupils are confident, fluent readers and are ready to progress. Movement between bands is not only dependent on the ability to read fluently but also on being able to show an appropriate comprehension of texts they meet. Children will be encouraged to read a variety of different text types e.g. fiction, non-fiction, poems, play-scripts etc.

For our developing readers in Year 2 and 3, the books that we provide are  decodable, whilst giving children the opportunity to extend the bank of words that they can read automatically. 

Within our books, we have a full range of genres to ensure that our pupils are accessing age-appropriate & interesting books. 

Those children who are not making expected progress will be part of a reading / phonics intervention. In addition to this, children can freely choose books from our well-stocked library, encouraging an independent love of reading.

PROVISION FOR STRUGGLING READERS IN KS2

Struggling readers in KS2, who still have gaps within their phonic knowledge, are regularly assessed, receive quality intervention and have access to separate phonic books. These books have been carefully selected to ensure that they provide opportunity to practise blending and develop fluency; in addition, they offer further challenge in the amount of text they contain and are age-appropriate. Once children have passed their phonics screening check, they are assessed against Rasinski’s Reading Rubric and children are targeted to develop the skills needed to support fluency.

Within our broader English Curriculum planning, our intent for reading is clear: 

• Credible and rich texts will be the central driver to the English curriculum – promoting a love of reading, excellent models of language, cultural broadening and confidence.
• Children become fluent and age-appropriate readers across Early Years and Key Stage 1 – so that they can access and comprehend all that Key Stage 2 has to offer, gaining a vitally growing vocabulary across the key stage. 
• With few exceptions, all children reach the expected standard in year 1 phonics, with word reading fluency being the primary driver of the year 1 reading curriculum – so they are ready to gain greater reading comprehension skills as their decoding secures.

We know that reading at home is equally as important as reading in school. We want our children to have access to high quality texts whenever they read. With this as our inspiration, all children in KS1 are provided with a reading book to take home and read alongside a library book. Depending on the child’s phonic ability, each child in KS2 is either provided with a Catch Up reading book, a scheme reading book or a book from the school library. The books provided are fully decodable and are matched with the phonic ability of the reader.

The reading curriculum is deliberately designed to be ambitious and aspirational, ensuring that every child leaves our school as a competent, confident reader. Drawing on the latest research around explicit vocabulary instruction, reading fluency and key comprehension strategies, this curriculum is a synthesis of what we know works in helping children make outstanding progress in reading and a distillation into consistent, well-structured practice. The clear structure and principles ensure that teaching is progressive, challenging and engaging and the rich, diverse literature spine acts as both a mirror so that every child can see themselves in the core texts and as a mirror to engage pupils with experiences beyond their own field of reference.

THE TEACHING AND DEVELOPMENT OF READING WITHIN THE CURRICULUM 

We prioritise the teaching of reading in the following ways: 

1. Consistent teaching of synthetic phonics throughout school using Sounds~Write; 
2. Quality whole class shared reading within Reception, Year 1 and Year 2; 
3. Quality whole class reading based on our CUSP curriculum from Year 1-Year 6; 
4. Daily reading of a shared class story/novel to all children by an adult; 
5. 1:1 reading with an adult (the frequency of this will depend on the child’s age and their level of need); 
6. Daily reading across the curriculum; 
7. Use of reading interventions to support the development of fluency and comprehension; phonics to fluency
8. Monitoring and supporting home reading.

Impact

When pupils leave our school, our Reading curriculum will have ensured that they have
developed quality communication skills and a life-long love of reading.
The majority of pupils will achieve age related expectations in English and clear progress will
be evident.
They will have firm foundations in English and will be well placed to make good progress at
Key Stage 3.

 

Reading for Pleasure

– Aims and Objectives  At St Gerard’s Roman Catholic Primary School we actively encourage reading for pleasure and recognise it as a core part of every child’s education, regardless of their background or attainment. We make reading a key part of our curriculum and expose pupils to a wide range of texts in a variety of different situations. At St Gerard’s we aim that every child becomes a lifelong reader. The National Literacy Trust has noted that becoming a lifelong reader is based on developing a deep love of reading. There is a growing body of evidence which illustrates the importance of reading for pleasure for both educational purposes as well as personal development (cited in Clark and Rumbold, 2006). As well as this, reading enjoyment has been reported as more important for children’s educational success than their family’s socio-economic status (OECD, 2002)  

School Commitment – Access to a wide range of texts/books . 

At St Gerard’s we give pupils opportunities to read a wide range of texts within the classroom. These texts include: 

• fiction and non-fiction books,  age appropriate picture books, poetry and magazines.

Teacher’s role –  At St Gerard’s the teachers and other adults have the important role of fostering a love of reading with the pupils. This is done through a wide range of activities: 

• Teachers regularly read aloud to pupils. Studies show that children who are read to aloud are more likely to do better in school both academically and socially. Effective reading aloud time is about creating a positive reading experience to engage pupils, so teachers model their enthusiasm for books and reading them. Teachers interact with the pupils during this reading time, sharing thoughts, putting on voices and using actions and asking questions to improve comprehension.
• Teachers encourage a love of reading and promote the reading of a wide range of books. As role models to the pupils, teachers model themselves as readers by discussing their own reading experiences with pupils.
• Teachers recommend books to pupils and promote books they have read. Teachers also encourage reading for pleasure by ensuring that pupils enjoying using the school library, that they can choose books to read at home to develop their wider reading along with a genuine love of reading.
• Resources are available and promote reading. Every classroom has a class reading area with a class library. The children vote for which book to read for whole class reading for pleasure sessions.
• Displays promote adults as readers and display their favourite books.
• Reading Ambassadors – All classes from Y2 upwards have voted for class Reading Ambassadors who promote a love of reading across the school, by recommend books to others and talking about their favourite authors. They are a voice for pupils across the school. 
• Links with the local library.  All pupils from Nursery to Y6 visit the local library at least once a term. At the library pupils are shown how to find and choose books of interest to them.  Visiting the local library with the school encourages pupils to visit the library outside of school hours and involve their parents and siblings in reading for pleasure. St Gerard’s also promotes the Summer Reading Challenge which helps to keep the children’s love of reading inginted over the summer break!
• St Gerard’s reading clubs for Key Stage 1 & 2 are very popular and promote a further enjoyment of reading beyond the school day.