English

Reading

Our Aims 

At St Bega’s we believe there is no greater skill that we can teach a child than how to read fluently. This opens up a world of endless learning possibilities and academic success. Our aim is to develop confident fluent readers and writers.   

Early reading, teaching children ‘how to read’ is underpinned by good quality systematic phonics teaching.  Phonics is the process that is used to help children break down words into sounds as well as building letter and word recognition.  We use the government approved programme SoundsWrite to teach phonics. 

A great amount of time is dedicated to reading in school, it is an intrinsic part of our school day and takes place in many forms. Modelled, shared, guided, group and individual reading is facilitated by trained practitioners.  Children throughout their day experience a range of texts including bible stories, texts matched to phonics and fiction as well as non-fiction texts linked to the curriculum.  

Class Story and Novels 

Adults in class model reading of a class story or novel for children daily.  By ‘reading aloud’ using intonation and expression children can recognise the pleasure and enjoyment that comes from reading while exposing them to vocabulary that they may not have heard before and helps them to develop the language of thought. The adult models an ‘expert’ at work. 

Learning to Read 

Nursery 

The journey of learning to read begins in Nursery, children begin to recognise the text-rich environment we and they live in.  Children are encouraged to listen attentively through stories, games and play.  Part of everyday practice children are encouraged to recognise their own name, those of others and labels.   Signs, labels, lists, logos and menus are often repeated by practitioners, to give meaning to text and promote independent recognition. 

Story time 

Books are available throughout the setting and children are encouraged to browse through books independently, while stories and rhymes are shared at least three times a day throughout Early Years. Children are encouraged to select favourites and those that stimulate their continuing play and learning.   

Books are chosen for a specific purpose: they encourage children to join in with repeated refrains; to experience rhythm and rhyme; and, to hear new vocabulary. Practitioner talk, alongside sharing a book, promotes comprehension, reinforces vocabulary and develops language. Children are encouraged to link what they have heard to their own experience and to think about the themes and messages in the stories. 

Preparing for phonics 

There are daily opportunities to play with sounds, differentiate between sounds, and become familiar with rhythm, rhyme, and alliteration.  This is often through songs and rhymes.  Through this children are taught to vocalise, segment and blend sounds to enable them to discriminate sounds for reading. Trained practitioners observe children’s development and incorporate next steps into children’s continuous play provision. Opportunities are provided in the environment and planned for which enable children to develop their pre-reading skills such as visual discrimination (silhouetting), sequencing (visual timetable) and memory (tidy up time, where does something belong).   

Interventions 

Recognising the importance of these skills, children who are identified as falling behind are quickly identified and interventions are put in place to support children to catch up quickly (BLAST and WellComm). 

Phonics - SoundsWrite 

Reception 

As children transition to Reception they begin the Sounds-Write Programme and are introduced to the conceptual knowledge that letters are symbols (spellings) that represent sounds by trained practitioners. The skills the children develop are blending, segmenting and phoneme manipulation. Progress through the ‘initial code’ is constantly monitored and interventions are made by the practitioners to keep the cohort together, so learning continues as a class. The children are taught to decode fluently and accurately through series of lessons by physical word-building, sound swapping, symbol searching and dictation.   

Key Stage 1 

Children are taught the extended code; that sounds maybe written in more than one way.  Children continue to build words, identify spellings of sounds and sort words so that they are able to read and spell a rapidly growing number of words. Children begin to build polysyllabic words as they gain confidence with segmenting. Opportunities are provided to build fluency such as speed reading and group reading.    

In Reception and Key Stage 1, phonics is taught as a 30 minute daily lesson.  Children needing intervention to maintain progress will have additional sessions with practitioners during the day.  The daily phonics lessons follow the same structure each day; with a review and consolidation of previous phonic knowledge, develop new code knowledge and time to practise their reading and writing skills. Each week ends with a spelling quiz to check children’s new code knowledge.  The children will have practised the spellings in school and parents are encouraged to practise building and spelling the words at home with their children.  

Reading books 

Children have a decodable reading book, matched to the sounds that they have been taught (previous Sounds-Write unit) and the automaticity that they are able to blend sounds.  These books are sent home daily and are changed weekly. We use Dandelion Launchers, Readers and SoundsWrite books which are consistent with the SoundsWrite Synthetics Phonics Programme. Children are encouraged to repeatedly read these books to build fluency.  Phonic books are recorded in the child’s reading record, children are expected to read at least 3 times at home each week and parents are encouraged to record any specific sounds or words with which their child is struggling.  

For more information on Sounds Write please click on the link below.

Reading to learn 

In Year 2 children begin to move from learning to read to reading to learn. As children become fluent decoders, they move from the phonic schemes of Sounds-Write and Dandelion books onto Accelerated Reader (AR).  Initially an adult will help guide and support them with their choice of books matched to the ability (AR level).   Much more focus is placed on reading for comprehension.  Children are guided through learning opportunities: building fluency by sometimes re-reading books; expanding their repertoire and checking their comprehension.  Our ultimate aim is for children to read freely, where the role of the teacher changes to become a curator/librarian who can provide direction and suggest suitable texts to pursue next.  

Throughout this progress is constantly monitored by the class teacher and interventions are made by the practitioners to keep the cohort together. We aim to hear those children who are struggling daily, children needing some encouragement and support twice weekly, with the rest of the class being heard weekly. 

Key Stage 2 

All children have the opportunity to read and share quality texts in daily reading sessions to widen their knowledge of different texts and discuss and share opinions. Aspects of the reading process and comprehension skills are incorporated according to the attainment of readers.  Reading comprehension requires many skills, to ensure a balanced systematic approach to reading comprehension and vocabulary, we use the VIPERS acronym (vocabulary, inference, prediction, explain, retrieve and sequence/summarise) to teach and practise the different reading domains. The teacher guides, supports and encourages while children try out ideas and skills. Teacher and children then ‘share’ their ideas together and practitioners continually monitor progress.  Standardised testing 3 times a year ensures teachers assessment of reading is accurate and prepares children national SATs testing in Year 6. 

Children are given many opportunities for Independent Reading across the school day. Independent reading does not always have to be individual reading; children can read collaboratively, in pairs or small groups, without adult support.  Each class has their own class library and children encouraged to read books which follow their own interests. 

Children use Accelerated Reader to ensure books are matched to their reading ability. Accelerated Reader is a computer programme that helps teachers to manage and monitor children’s independent reading practice. The children pick a book at their own level and read it at their own pace. When finished, the child takes a short quiz on the computer. The programme allows the teacher to monitor progress. They take reading books home that are matched to their level on Accelerated reader and are encouraged to choose a variety of genres. Children are expected to read at three times each week and parents should continue to support their children to achieve this. 

Where reading intervention is needed practitioners support children, who do not benefit from reading at home, as well as vulnerable readers where an adult makes time to hear the child read every day providing opportunities for repeated reading to build speed and accuracy; and, where gaining meaning from the text is the barrier helping children increase their understanding.  

More able readers are encouraged to discover an ever wider repertoire of books; to develop their vocabulary; find out information for themselves; and how you can be transferred to a whole new world through the pages of a book thus raising their aspirations. 

Children have opportunities to apply their reading skills in wider contexts in school and in the community.  They read at Mass, during liturgical prayer, liturgies and whole school performances. They are invited to read aloud in class both individually and chorally.   Other opportunities to promote reading include “Read with the Bill”, World Book Day Activities and visits from authors.  Recognising the important role that parents play in fostering a love of reading, parents are regularly invited into school.  Information Meetings provide parents with information about how to support their children with reading and to share books and read with their children.  

Promoting a love of reading 

To love reading, children need to be able to decode automatically and have a wide knowledge of the world around them.  We believe our curriculum supports children to develop the knowledge skills required.  With these in place and supported by exposure to an increasing number and variety of quality texts, children are supported and encouraged to develop their own personal interests when reading.   

Special opportunities in school including reading with a teddy for our younger children, reading with the ‘Bill’ to World Book Day and special reading events all help to promote a love of reading.  

Staff and children continue to share book recommendations so that all children recognise the variety of books to ensure that they discover a love for reading.