Reading

Intent

At Silverdale Primary Academy, reading is at the core of our curriculum. We want our children to leave our school being:

• fluent, confident and expressive readers who have both the skill and the will to read effectively
• readers who enjoy a wide range of genres
• readers for pleasure as well as for information
• able to Read and respond to a wide range of different types of literature
• able to understand the layout and how to use different genres and text types
• able to understand and apply their knowledge of phonics and spelling patterns and use this to decode words with accuracy
• able to build their bank of sight words to enable fluent reading
• interested in words and their meanings, developing a rich and varied vocabulary
• able to understand and respond to literature drawn from a range of cultures and literary heritage.

Our school understands the challenge that exists between teaching children to be fluent readers whilst ensuring that we support them to develop a life-long love of reading.  Our reading curriculum is designed to achieve a balance between develop the Instructional Agenda (the skill) and the Pleasure Agenda (the will). This policy intends to promote a love of reading for all pupils whilst creating life-long readers who have the skills to access all areas of the curriculum with independence and confidence so that they go on to be successful in Key Stage 3, 4 and beyond.

Implementation

Reading at Silverdale Primary Academy is taught systematically. Some teaching strategies are generic across the whole school, whilst others are specific to key stages. Implementation is by the class teacher and is supported by classroom teaching assistants.

Phonics from the Start

In Nursery we immerse children in activities providing opportunities to develop their phonological awareness.

There are six aspects taught:

1. Environmental Sounds
2. Instrumental Sounds
3. Body Percussion
4. Rhythm and Rhyme
5. Alliteration 
6. Voice Sounds 
7. Oral blending and segmenting

These aspects are taught in small group sessions and total immersion in a rich language environment. We aim to do this by providing a totally immersive nursery experience with lots of rhymes, singing time, rhyming stories, clapping rhythms, musical instruments taught through play at every opportunity.  Informal ways to explore letters: e.g. sand moulds, sounds of the week, phonics awareness through modelling writing, or sounding out words. 

Moving on with Phonics

• Starting in Reception pupils will receive more formal lessons taught using the Read, Write, Inc Synthetic Phonic Programme. All our staff are highly trained to deliver this. It is taught daily, systematically both to whole class at the correct phonological stage and to discrete groups. 
• It is important that the teaching of reading is matched to the teaching of phonics. As such, all children have a reading book that matches the sounds they have learnt or are learning in their phonics lessons.

Reception

• Children will enter Reception having been immersed in opportunities to tune in to sounds.
• At the end of Autumn term, most children will be able to read all set 1 sounds and blend sounds into words orally.
• At the end of Spring term, most children will be able to blend sounds to read words and read red story books.
• At the end of the Summer Term, most children will be able to read some set 2 sounds and read green or purple story books.

Year 1

• At the end of the Autumn Term, most children will be secure at reading all set 2 sounds and read pink story books.
• At the end of the Spring Term, most children will be able to read some set 3 sounds and read yellow story books.
• At the end of the Summer Term, most children will be secure with reading all set 3 sounds and read blue story books.

Year 2

By the end of Autumn most children will read with increasing fluency and comprehension and read grey story books.

• The emphasis now moves onto fluency and comprehension.
• Those children who are falling behind the expected standard will continue to receive targeted phonics intervention in order to bridge the gap.
• Daily reading lessons focus on vocabulary, retrieval, summarising and inference, using the core English text.

Strategies and Aims for Early Years and Key Stage 1:

• A commitment to linking reading with writing
• Shared Reading with small groups or the whole class
• Guided Reading of the same text in small groups, including teaching a range of reading strategies and comprehension
• Daily and frequent readers on a 1:1 basis, for those children who need to ‘catch-up’ with their peers/chronological age
• Daily phonics lessons using Read, Write Inc
• Phonics intervention groups lead by skilled teaching assistants in each class where needed 
• Reading of texts linked to Eglish
• Daily story time in which the class teacher reads stories to the class to promote a love of reading and model fluency
• Library visits, including the class and school library 
• Attractive reading areas around school
• Books promoted around school   
• World Book Day involving , booksellers and a range of book related activities

Key Stage 2

In Key Stage 2 children learn to become fluent readers with increasingly growing comprehension skills. Children who are in a learning gap are given significant support through daily 1:1 reading and reading  precision teaching to plug both their phonic gaps and reading with an adult for fluency. 

Key Stage 2 Reading Skills

Reading is taught through the explicit delivery of reading domains from Year 2 onwards, with Key Stage Two children accessing whole-class reading five times a week. Reading domains are regularly revisited to secure the skill of comprehension and the tools we use to connect a text to full understanding. This is delivered in small steps and sequenced in books using question structure strips, which reduce cognitive load for the child and act as a prompt to remind them of the journey they have been on throughout the lesson. The structure of the lesson consists of exposure to challenging vocabulary; a mixture of reading techniques; explanation; worked example; attempt; apply and challenge.   

Reading enables children access to expert authors to enable them to make connections between the authorial style and skill they see as a reader, to how they can develop themselves as writers. As a school we challenge children to first read as a reader, then read as a writer, considering the impact of language choice and the way an author creates a book that impacts on the reader. This enables children to connect all areas of their learning and feel confident in their skills as a reader.

The Pleasure Agenda:

• All pupils are read to by an enabling adult on a daily basis. This time is protected as we believe it is vital in developing a love of reading and the will to read independently and by choice. In these daily quality story time sessions, staff read aloud books at a higher level than the ability of the pupils to the whole class. They read with passion and excellent fluency modelling what makes a good reader.  Books have been selected that compliment the core text in the writing curriculum whilst also promoting cultural capital and engage the interests of the pupils. Each cohort will have a suite of core texts that will form the depth study for the academic year. These texts represent a promise from the school to every pupil that it serves of the literature that it is committed to studying throughout a pupil’s school journey. These texts have been mapped carefully to ensure a breadth of experiences, authors, texts and themes is addressed across the Primary years. In addition to these texts, there are core poems that each year group will study in detail;
• Heritage texts
• BAME author
• Strong female role model
• Social, ethical or moral issues.

When promoting reading for pleasure at home, children have the opportunity to read a text at their appropriate ZPD  reading level alongside a text which they choose to read for pleasure.  Children are supported when choosing books for pleasure, based on recommendations from an adult, or other children in their class family. 

• Each class has an inviting class library, in addition to our whole school library, where children can access a wide range of genres, and authors including Classical Titles.

Impact

As we believe that reading is at the heart of all learning, the impact of our reading curriculum goes beyond the result of statutory assessments. Children have the opportunity to enter the wide and varied worlds that reading opens up to them. As they develop their own interest in books, a deep love of literature across a range of genres, cultures and styles is enhanced.

Through the teaching of systematic phonics and reading skills, our aim is for children to become fluent and confident readers who can apply their knowledge and experience to a range of texts through the Key Stage 2 curriculum and into Key Stage 3, 4 and beyond.

A Year 6 reader, transitioning into secondary school, will be a 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 across all areas of the curriculum.

Impact

As we believe that reading is at the heart of all learning, the impact of our reading curriculum goes beyond the result of statutory assessments. Children have the opportunity to enter the wide and varied worlds that reading opens up to them. As they develop their own interest in books, a deep love of literature across a range of genres, cultures and styles is enhanced.

Through the teaching of systematic phonics and reading skills, our aim is for children to become fluent and confident readers who can apply their knowledge and experience to a range of texts through the Key Stage 2 curriculum and into Key Stage 3, 4 and beyond.

A Year 6 reader, transitioning into secondary school, will be a 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 across all areas of the curriculum.