Reading

Reading Intent

At Belton CE Primary School reading is one of our main priorities and our curriculum reflects a sharp focus upon early reading from the very start of school, as it is the ability to read and understand that opens up learning to children. We aim to provide all children with a high-quality education in English that will teach pupils to speak, read and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others effectively.

All children will read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading, to gain knowledge across the curriculum and develop their comprehension skills. It is our intention to ensure that, by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read fluently, and with confidence, in any subject in their forthcoming secondary education.

At Belton CE Primary we use appropriate quality texts for children to read covering all genres. Books are book banded in order to ensure progression and challenge right through to the end of key stage 2. The children’s ability to recognise graphemes and common exception words and their ability to blend and segment are all assessed and tracked. Children are also assessed using PM Benchmarking to ensure they read appropriately challenging books. The children are also assessed termly using NFER papers.

 

Reading Implementation:

At Belton CE Primary School children begin their reading journey by adopting our schools love of books and shared stories. In EYFS it is here learners are introduced to phonemes/sounds and graphemes/letters systematically. Through daily phonics sessions they also learn to develop and apply blending and segmenting skills for reading using Twinkl Phonics. This is also mirrored in Key Stage 1 with daily phonics sessions. All classes have Reading Records which are used to record how often children read to an adult in school and home. Focus children are heard read at least daily by an adult. Adults within the class support the children to choose appropriate text types for the children supported by the Bug Club scheme (see appendix 1). Children throughout school are given the opportunity to take home a book every day from our Bug Club reading scheme. Teachers allocate children with phonetically decodable books at the appropriate level for each child. Whole class guided reading sessions take place three times a week in EYFS and Key Stage 1 with a focus on vocabulary, sequencing and inference. In Key Stage 2 whole class guided reading sessions are taught daily using high quality texts from a range of genres (see rolling programme – Appendix 2).  The skills taught in Key Stage 1 are built upon with a focus on vocabulary, retrieval and explanation, summarising and inference. A different reading skill is taught each day, while developing their pace, fluency, expression and general book talk.

 

Reading Impact:

Children’s progress in phonics is continually reviewed through periodic phonic assessments and evidence from their reading and writing. Through these, teachers identify the graphemes that need to be addressed which then informs groupings. In June, the National Phonics Screening Check is undertaken to confirm that the children have learned to decode to an age appropriate standard and determines what level of provision they will require the following year. In Key Stage One and Key Stage Two, regular assessment of the children’s decoding and comprehension is undertaken through PM Benchmarking. Reading judgements are secured through the triangulation of test data, evidence from the pupil and the curriculum. Our test data comes from NFER, SATs and PM Benchmarking.

 

What a fantastic afternoon we had with author Daniel Henshaw! He kicked off the afternoon with a whole school assembly with our very own mystery to solve 'The Missing Wedding Dress'. We had to solve clues and interview suspects to find out who had stolen Mrs Yendall's wedding dress. With a hilarious twist we solved the mystery!
This got KS2 revved up to write their own mystery stories with guidance from Daniel Henshaw. I am looking forward to seeing the outcome of these stories.
Watch this space!
 
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