Intent

At Idle C of E Primary School, we believe that reading is an essential life skill to enable children to understand and appreciate the world around them.

We are committed to enabling our children to become confident, fluent and lifelong readers.

At the heart of our curriculum, is the drive to nurture a love of reading, enriching children’s learning through creative teaching activities which use engaging and inspiring books across a wide range of themes.

We have high expectations of all our pupils and we encourage children to use their passion for reading as a springboard to unlock other areas of the curriculum.

We encourage reading pleasure for all pupils, recognising the benefits not only for reading outcomes, but for wider learning enjoyment and mental wellbeing.

 

Implementation

At Idle Primary, we follow a synthetic phonics programme called Essential Letters and Sounds, which is validated by the Department for Education. This scheme is a method of first learning letter sounds and then blending them together to read and write words. This is supported by a comprehensive scheme of reading books provided by Oxford University Press and Dandelion Readers. These books are matched closely to the phonics stage each child is on. Daily whole class phonics lessons take place in Reception and year 1.

Children who still require phonics in year 2 and Key Stage 2, are assessed and taught through short interventions using ELS.

In Reception and year 1, children take home a decodable reading book matched to their phonics phase. They also have access to a library of fiction and non-fiction books in class to take home to read for pleasure with their parents. In year 2, children begin the year taking home books from the Oxford Reading Tree scheme.

Once children in year 2 are reading with fluency, they are encouraged to take home books from the 100 recommended reads for year 2. Children in Key Stage 2 take home books from the 100 recommended reads for their year group to encourage reading for pleasure. If a child is still receiving phonics interventions, they will continue to take home relevant decodable books from the reading scheme as well as a book to read for pleasure. We aim to hear children read in school at least once a week in Key Stage 1. The bottom 20% of readers in each class are heard three times a week across all year groups.

Whole class reading takes place daily across Key Stages 1 and 2. Classes use a wide range of high quality and diverse fiction and non-fiction texts as well as digital media and poetry to practise applying the reading skills we teach. Our Strategy For Reading sets out how we teach reading with a focus on fluency every lesson and the teaching of vocabulary, retrieval, inference and comprehension skills every week.

Carefully selected books are also used to inspire our children to write. A diverse selection of fiction and non-fiction texts lie at the heart of our writing curriculum. We are committed to giving children opportunities to read, not only in English lessons, but the wider curriculum too.

Quality class novels are timetabled to be read to children every day, with book blather time during Monday’s whole class reading, where children do no writing. They discuss themes, characters and predict what might happen in their class novel as part of our Reading for Pleasure agenda.

ERIC (Everybody Reading In Class) is also timetabled daily, a chance for children to read books of their choice for pleasure.

Home reading is essential to consolidate skills children have learned in school. Children are provided with a reading record and asked to read a minimum of three times a week to an adult. This is monitored in school and those children who are falling behind with their reading are given extra time to read to an adult in school.

We cultivate reading behaviours that children will need to be enthusiastic and discerning readers. Through reading frequently and widely, they can vocalise their opinions and understanding of what they have read.

Impact

As we believe that reading is key to all learning, the impact of our reading curriculum goes beyond the result of statutory assessments.

As children’s interest in books grows, a love of literature across a range of genres, cultures and styles is developed.

 

Through the teaching of systematic phonics and reading enquiry, children will become fluent and confident readers who can apply their knowledge and experience to a range of texts through the Key Stage 2 curriculum.

 

As a Year 6 reader, transitioning into secondary school, we aspire that children are fluent, confident and able readers, who can access a range of texts for pleasure and enjoyment, as well as use their reading skills to unlock learning and all areas of the curriculum. We firmly believe that reading is the key to all learning and so the impact of our reading curriculum goes beyond the results of the statutory assessments.

 

In addition to this:

• Parents and carers will have a good understanding of how they can support reading at home, and contribute regularly to home-school records.
• The percentage of pupils working at age related expectations and above age related expectations within each year group will be at least in line with national averages and will match the ambitious targets of individual children.
• There will be no significant gaps in the progress of different groups of pupils (e.g. disadvantaged vs non-disadvantaged)