Reading at Queen Victoria Primary School
Intent
At Queen Victoria, we believe the teaching of reading is integral to a child’s understanding and appreciation of the world around them; a platform, which allows our children to see beyond what they know, share in cultural experiences and develop the vocabulary they need to effectively express themselves. Our reading curriculum strives to foster a lifelong love of reading, as we cultivate the behaviours our children will need to be discerning readers linked closely to our Pioneer traits, ensuring they read frequently and widely using self-regulation strategies and discuss what they read. This curriculum is delivered through systematic synthetic phonics, a linked approach to shared and guided reading, home reading, reading across the curriculum, regular opportunities for independent reading and hearing quality texts read aloud every day. We believe all of these are essential components offering the range of opportunities needed to develop fluent, enthusiastic and critical readers.
Furthermore, we want our children to be motivated to read regularly at home ensuring their reading opportunities increase, along with their fluency and stamina, which in turn increases their enjoyment of reading. Therefore, the link between children’s motivation to read and reading for pleasure is reciprocal. We know reading for pleasure is beneficial not only for reading outcomes, but for wider learning enjoyment and mental wellbeing. Thus, we work hard to foster a love of independent reading and build communities of engaged readers. We understand the significance of parents and carers in supporting their children to develop both word reading and comprehension skills so we endeavour to build a home-school partnership, which enables parents and carers to have the confidence to support their children with reading at home. Reading is at the very heart of our curriculum. We are committed to promoting a love for reading and not only giving children opportunities to read in English lessons, but in the wider curriculum too.
Implementation
Reception and Year One
We teach early reading through the systematic, synthetic phonics programme Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. Reception children have a daily phonics lesson, which follows the progression for Little Wandle Letters and Sounds, right from the start, and this continues in Year One to ensure our children become fluent readers.
We teach phonics for 30 minutes a day. In Reception, we build from 15-minute lessons to the full-length lesson as quickly as possible. Each Friday, we review the week’s teaching to help children become fluent readers. Teaching begins in week 2 of the Autumn term and the children make a strong start in Reception as we follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised expectations of progress. Children are given dedicated time to read independently in school. Their chosen book is used as a home reader to encourage the children to become immersed in that text.
Reception children are taught to read and spell words using Phase 2 and 3 GPCs, and words with adjacent consonants (Phase 4) with fluency and accuracy. Children in Year 1 review Phase 3 and 4 and are taught to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy. The phonic programme exceeds the expectations of the National Curriculum and Early Learning Goals with clearly defined expectations set out term by term. The phonic progression identifies the grapheme phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and tricky words taught every week. A new sound is taught four days of the week, with a review of the sounds taught for the week on the fifth day. Lessons follow the format of:
· Recall and review - short, pacey review of prior learning;
· Teach - introduction of new learning with strong teacher modelling;
· Practise and apply - children practice and apply the learning;
· Review of key learning - reinforcement of the key learning and addressing any misconceptions identified during the lesson;
· Apply to reading - children then apply their phonic skills to reading fully decodable books matched to their reading ability.
· Daily keep up lessons
· The teacher will check that all of the children are keeping up in the lesson and
· Will have the lowest 20% of children in their eye line.
· If children do not grasp the grapheme/phoneme correspondences and tricky
· words in the lesson, 1-1 intervention will take place on the same day, to
· Ensure any misconceptions and weaknesses in learning are addressed.
These sessions are taught by fully trained adults – our reading experts. All staff throughout school have received the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised training. Keep up sessions match the structure of the class teaching and use the same procedures, resources and mantras, but in smaller steps with more repetition. This is so that every child is secure with their learning and enables them to keep up with the expected progress.
Application of Phonics to Reading
All our reading books are aligned to Little Wandle Letters and Sounds and are fully decodable, following the progression in our phonic programme. When selecting a book for a child to read, we ensure it is carefully matched to the letter-sound correspondences they have learnt, so they can confidently, and effectively, apply their phonic knowledge. Children continue to be taught phonics until they become fluent readers. Phonics is the way we teach decoding skills, in order to give children the most efficient method to read words and one which will set them up for life. In the phonics sessions and throughout the day, children have opportunities to practise applying their phonic skills and to read words with the new grapheme, phoneme correspondence. This enables the learning to be committed to their long-term memory.
In Key Stage 1 there are three reading practice sessions each week where we teach the application of reading skills. The children read in groups with fully decodable books, carefully matched to the children’s phonic ability. Each reading practice session has a clear focus, to not overload the children’s working memory. The reading practice sessions have been designed to focus on three key reading skills: decoding, prosody: teaching children to read with understanding and expression, and comprehension-teaching children to understand the text. Each reading practice session will begin with a pacey review of graphemes, tricky words and practise of fluent reading of words, which will appear in the book. The children will already know these from their phonic lesson, but the review allows them to have these sounds and words at the forefront of their working memory. In the comprehension session, the teacher will focus on a particular domain. (Please see appendix 1). In each reading practice session, there is a focus on developing fluency. The children will read the same book in each of the three sessions. They will then have this book allocated to them online through Big Cat Collins to practise reading fluently at home.
In Reception, these sessions start in Week. Children who are not yet blending, have daily additional blending practice in small groups, so that they quickly learn to blend and can begin to read books.
Reading in Year Two - The structure of the reading practice sessions continue in the same way as in Reception and Year One for those children who still require the extra support and phonics knowledge. The other children are organised into two parallel groups and then four groups within that with others of a similar reading ability. . Each reading group have a reading practice session led by an adult at least once a week. The focus of these sessions continues to be a specific reading skill, with all skills being revisited regularly throughout the year. There are three reading sessions per week. To further foster a love of reading, once children have a secure knowledge of the phonic code, they will read books at age related expectation, matched to their ability; these will include a range of different authors and genres through our Accelerated Reader programme.
Daily Read Aloud
Every day, in every class, an adult reads aloud to the children. We choose a wide variety of texts from our reading spine, which has been chosen so children can listen to a breadth of different genres and authors, whilst also developing a real love of reading. Where possible the book is above the level the children can access independently to expose them to vocabulary that is more ambitious.
Reading in Key Stage Two
Year 3 - The structure of the reading practice sessions continue in the same way as in Reception and Year One for those children who still require the extra support and phonics knowledge. The focus of these sessions continues to be a specific reading skill, with all skills being revisited regularly throughout the year. There are three reading sessions per week and teachers ensure each session is well planned and the intent identified for the lesson along with questions/activities. All resources are readily available to support the delivery of the reading practise sessions. The texts used for these sessions varies depending on the focus but are chose carefully for the specific age group. They can include excerpts from texts, poetry, short stories, and longer texts from books or other suitable materials. Teachers ensure time is also provided to model effective fluency and expression and children are given the opportunity to practise this too.
Independent Reading
Teachers have been trained on the Accelerated Reader programme and know every child in their class as a reader. The children are encouraged to select different genres and books written by a variety of authors from the Accelerated Reader library and from the online bookstore MyOn.
Reading Across the Curriculum
Reading is promoted and developed across the curriculum and specific vocabulary is explicitly shared with the children within each unit of work, to develop children’s understanding of these key words.
Reading for Pleasure
In order to promote reading for pleasure and to encourage children to develop and embed a real love of reading; we choose children in praise assembly to receive a golden token which thy can use in the book vending machine. Children are encouraged to take a book home to read or share for pleasure alongside their home reader book.
Home Reading
As part of their homework, children are expected to read at home at least three times a week. The organisation is as follows:
Reception and Year One. Children have the same book allocated to them online as they have used in their reading practice session to practise fluency. Then they are able to choose a book to take home to share with their parents/carers, these are picture books, fiction or non-fiction books; the purpose of these books is to read for pleasure. Progress is recorded in home reading diaries and parents are asked to comment on their child’s reading.
Year Two/KS2. Children take home at least one reading book each week, which will encourage a love of reading, and which is matched to their reading ability. Some children have their books allocated online to match their phonics phase and others use the Accelerated Reader programme. Progress in school is recorded in reading diaries and parents are asked to comment on their child’s reading. The children are encouraged to change their independent reading book at least once a week (unless it is a longer novel) and record in reading diaries.
Here at Queen Vic we have an early reading/phonics leader who is highly skilled in the teaching of phonics and early reading. They are involved in monitoring the teaching and learning of phonics and early reading in school. They coach staff individually where needed and provide regular training to ensure the staff teach with fidelity to the programme.
Impact
Reading Assessment
Assessment for learning is used:
• daily within class and within reading practise lessons to identify children needing keep-up support.
• weekly in the review lesson for Reception and Year One to assess gaps, address these immediately and secure fluency of GPCs, words and spellings.
Summative assessment is used:
• each half term to assess progress, to identify gaps in learning that need to be addressed, to identify any children needing additional support and to plan the support that they need. If children are not secure in their phonics and application to reading, then further focused practice will be put in place to enable them to become fluent, able readers. We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments to identify the gaps in their phonic knowledge and teach to these using the Keep-up resources – at pace. We plan phonics ‘catch-up’ lessons to address specific reading gaps. These short, sharp lessons last 10 minutes and take place at least three times a week.
• by SLT to scrutinise progress. For Reception and Year One, this is completed using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessment tracker, to narrow attainment gaps between different groups of children and so that any additional support for teachers can be put into place.
National Statutory Assessments
Reading elements of the children’s language and English skills are assessed in the first term of Reception using early learning goal assessments. Children are formally assessed at the end of Year One when they undertake the Phonic Screening Check, and again in Year Two if they did not meet the required standard previously. From Year One onwards, formal summative assessment of reading comprehension is undertaken via SATs tests and other assessments.
Children will leave Queen Victoria as confident, competent readers who can read fluently and with good understanding. They will be equipped with a secure understanding of a wide range of vocabulary and authorial techniques, being able to read with a writer’s eye. This will be demonstrated by children being assessed as meeting at least age related expectations and also having a good knowledge of a range of literature, with a real love of reading evident too.
Appendix 1
These are the content domains against which we assess the children at the end of
Key Stages.
Reading Content domains KS1:
1a - draw on knowledge of vocabulary to understand texts;
1b - identify / explain key aspects of fiction and non-fiction texts, such as characters, events, titles and information;
1c - identify and explain the sequence of events in texts;
1d - make inferences from the text;
1e - predict what might happen on the basis of what has been read so far.
Reading Content domains KS2:
2a - give / explain the meaning of words in context;
2b - retrieve and record information / identify key details from fiction and non-fiction;
2c - summarise main ideas from more than one paragraph;
2d - make inferences from the text / explain and justify inferences with evidence from the text;
2e - predict what might happen from details stated and implied;
2f - identify / explain how information / narrative content is related and contributes to meaning as a whole;
2g - identify / explain how meaning is enhanced through choice of words and phrases;
2h - make comparisons within the text.