English Reading

Reading newsletter - Autumn 2 2024

Reading newsletter - Autumn 1 2024

OUR VISION FOR READING

At Cheswick Green Primary School, we want all children to enjoy reading, be fluent, competent and to have read widely so that they have a growing understanding of the world.  As a school, we believe that creating a culture of reading is a vital tool in ensuring our children are given the best life chances. Cultivating readers with a passion for a wide range of materials will ensure that children’s love of reading will extend far beyond the classroom and allow them to build on their skills independently through a real curiosity and thirst for knowledge.

READING CURRICULUM INTENT  

At Cheswick Green Primary, we actively encourage children to develop a love of reading and to be able to understand what they read.

Our aims at Cheswick Green Primary are to:

• Provide a range of reading for pleasure opportunities so that children develop a love of reading.
• Provide a rigorous and structured phonics programme to ensure that children can decode age appropriate books, with access to books that will support their early reading and beyond. * See Our Phonics Intent, Implementation and Impact document
• Develop the children’s reading fluency by a whole school focus on automaticity, and accuracy prosody.
• Develop the children’s oral and written comprehension skills, with skilled questioning and opportunities for discussion at the heart of this.
• Expose children to rich and varied vocabulary though real and engaging texts.
• Provide reading as models for the children’s own writing and make the link between reading and writing explicit to the children.
• Support children in reaching year group expectations and put timely intervention in place where needed and as appropriate

READING CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION

At Cheswick Green we develop children’s reading fluency throughout the school by explicitly building in opportunities to develop the children’s automaticity, accuracy and prosody. Developing children’s prosody begins with our youngest children in EYFS before they can even read, through lots of speaking and listening activities, the use of stories with repeated patterns, and role play. As children learn to read, we help the children become automatic with text through a range of games, flash cards and activities to strengthen word recognition and accuracy in their reading.  Fluency strategies are then used in whole class lessons, guided reading and 1-1 reading sessions including the use of tracking the text, echo reading and practising texts for performance.

Regular guided reading sessions in Foundation through to year 2, enables teachers to ensure that children are developing fluency with their reading so that they can have a more secure understanding of the text. Guided reading enables teachers to work closely with small groups to also develop their comprehension skills. 

In our school, our reading curriculum links closely with our writing curriculum; we use a text-based approach that enables us to create opportunities for reading, discussion and writing within English and reading lessons. This means we immerse the children in a class text, picture book or extract so that we can expose the children to rich and varied vocabulary and different language structures.  These in turn become models for the children’s own writing. As the children move higher up the school, regular whole class immersed in reading sessions, replace guided reading. In these classes, children who are still struggling to decode age appropriate books, in addition to the whole class lessons are provided with timely intervention. Our classrooms are inclusive and supportive of all learners.

Throughout the school, we have a skills based approach to reading using VIPERS (Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explain, Retrieve and Sequence/Summarise).  These skills are taught explicitly to the children, and regularly referenced throughout our reading lessons.

Whole Class Reading information - October 2024

READING CURRICULUM IMPACT

The following outcomes are the result of our provision in English:

• Regular fluency instruction will improves the children’s understanding of texts and in turn strengthen their comprehension skills.
• Staff who are enthusiastic in their approach and promote a love of reading to ensure all learners succeed;
• A reading curriculum which equips pupils for the next phase of their education and beyond;
• A diverse reading spine which supports all learners to see themselves reflected in the texts they are reading;
• Pupils who can decode texts confidently and fluently so that they can enjoy and understand what they are reading;
• Pupils who are able to make links between reading and writing and write as readers, and read as writers;
• A body of staff who are continuously evolving and improving to meet the needs of pupils as they move through the school;
• A governing body who are clear about what the English teaching and learning of reading provision looks like within the school.