English – Reading
Intent, Implementation and Impact
Intent
At Stanhope Primary School, we believe that Reading is a fundamental aspect of our curriculum. We believe that Reading is the key to success and is a lifelong skill to succeed in life. At Stanhope, we promote a love for learning in order to encourage children to take interest in reading a variety of books.
Throughout their time at school, pupils develop and expand their comprehension skills whilst becoming fluent readers. We expect our pupils to read both fluently and widely and encourage all children to express their thoughts and opinions. At school, pupils have access to a wide range of text types and genres from a variety of authors and can independently select their books for pleasure.
Implementation
At Stanhope Primary School, we teach daily phonics using the Read Write Inc (RWI) programme in order to build important foundations for lifelong readers. The teaching of phonics is a high priority within Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and Key Stage One (KS1).
In Nursery, our children begin to develop their listening skills and start to discriminate between sounds, recognising rhythm and rhyme.
In Reception, our children are introduced to Set 1 sounds following our RWI programme. As they progress to Year 1, the children are taught both Set 2 and Set 3 sounds. Every day, staff systematically teach pupils the relationship between sounds and spelling patterns.
All pupils within KS1 and children in KS2, who require further support in phonics, are taught in groups, which are determined by termly RWI assessments. Children within KS1 and KS2 may also receive targeted interventions weekly in order to ‘keep up’.
In order to develop fluency in Reading, each child in EYFS receive weekly Reading books. Pupils within KS1 as well as those children in KS2, who are accessing daily RWI sessions, all receive a copy of the RWI phonics book they have been reading in their sessions as well as a corresponding RWI Book Bag Book.
Children with KS2 have access to a wide range of books all banded to show progression. The children have access to Oxford Reading Tree, TreeTops, Project-X and Songbirds.
From Year 2 to Year 6, pupils use both Accelerated Reader and myON to support every child to become independent fluent readers. The children have access to a wide variety of books within the different ZPD bands. Every half term, the children complete a STAR Reading Test in order to obtain their current ZPD level. Pupils can independently select a book within their ZPD.
At Stanhope Primary School, we always encourage a love of reading through our classroom libraries and main school library. We participate in special events each academic year including Roald Dahl Day, World Book Day as well as Book Fair and Book Clubs.
Impact
At Stanhope Primary School, we expect our students to leave at the end of Year 6 with excellent communication skills that they can transfer into secondary school and later life.
It is important that children achieve through enthusiasm and engagement as well as attainment and progress. Regardless of each child’s starting points, we provide endless opportunities to develop their speaking and listening skills as well as their thinking and problem solving.
At the end of primary school, we hope that all children are enthusiastic about reading. We expect all pupils to read fluently across a wide range of genres including fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
Reading
At Stanhope, reading is at the forefront of our curriculum and appears most within our timetables and across the school day. Our goal is to ensure that by the time children leave school they acquire the reading skills and language knowledge to read increasingly complex books and are fluent, confident, lifelong readers who read for pleasure and for information. As a school we are determined that every child learns to read. We prioritise how to read in order to ‘read to learn’, focusing on both word reading and comprehension as children progress through school. To ensure that children can access the curriculum, we place a high focus on ‘learning to read’ starting from our foundation stages.
Children regularly hear good modelling from staff members through sharing of a class novel. Pupils will experience a variety of texts and will be taught to appreciate a range of styles, genres and themes, including those of other cultures and opportunities for cross-curricular work will be taken. We actively encourage children’s interest in books by creating an inviting atmosphere in which to read and provide a wide range of different reading material available. All classrooms provide a range of age appropriate and level appropriate high quality texts, which children can read regularly within a designated class time.
Pupils receive the age appropriate teaching of reading skills:
FS1/2
- Daily Letters and Sounds
- Read Write Inc.
- Guided Reading
KS1
- Daily Read Write Inc
- Guided Reading sessions
- Class Novels
- Discrete Reading Comprehension lessons (Year 2 VIPERs)
KS2
- Daily Guided Reading sessions
- Discrete Reading Comprehension lessons (VIPERs)
- Class Novels
Questioning within guided reading and reading comprehension lessons focus on reading fluency, linguistic knowledge and knowledge of the world, themes and conventions, comprehension, inference and language for effect.
Home Reading Scheme
FS2 – RWI
KS1 – RWI/Oxford Reading Tree/Accelerated Reader
KS2 – Accelerated Reading Level (a mixture of fiction/non-fiction/classics/graphic novels)
Reading Eggs
Children within Key Stage One have the opportunity to access Reading Eggs – both at school and at home. Reading Eggs is an online program that makes learning to read interesting and engaging for all children. It has fantastic reading games and activities. Your child will be provided with their own unique login to access this program.
Star Reading/Accelerated Reader/MyOn
Children year 2 and up have access to our Star Reading Programme at both school and home.
5-A-Day
The importance of reading for the education and overall life opportunities for children cannot be overstated. With this in mind, we strive to ensure that reading permeates throughout our school day, with multiple opportunities given for children to engage with texts or apply skills associated with reading. As a result, we developed a ‘Five-a-day’ approach to reading – in other words every child is given five distinct reading opportunities (at least) through the course of a typical day:
- Early morning reading– Children given opportunities to read on arrival at school. Every child will read with a member of staff at least once a week. Lowest 20% & targets at least 3 times a week.
- Assemblies– Children exposed to further stories of current affairs and SMSC themes. We also celebrate reading in award assemblies.
- Reading lessons– Children to take part in RWI or Guided reading sessions every day.
- Curriculum subjects– Children to have linked texts and books available for all subject in class library and in lesson time.
- Story time– Time to read the class novel from long term plan. In addition to class novels, children have access to 5 ‘Linked Texts’ each term. These are shorter stories/books that link directly to each year group’s curriculum topics. Teachers may wish to use whole texts or extracts from these texts within reading lessons or as a stimulus for curriculum lessons.
We believe that regular opportunities for children to be immersed in reading and reading skills through high quality texts, in an environment that promotes and celebrates reading, helps craft independent thinkers who share our love of books.
Other Opportunities for Reading
- All pupils will be offered the opportunity to attend the yearly book fair.
- Topic weeks such as Roald Dahl Day and World Book Day.
- Pupils from FS to Year 6 have access to the school library and are encouraged to change their books regularly.
- Out of school library visits.
- Visits from authors/workshops.
Reading Curriculum Progression Map
