Reading

Intent

At Barwic Parade, we understand that word reading and comprehension are vital skills and underpin all other subjects within the curriculum. We want all children within our school to develop the skills needed to become fluent readers who are able to comprehend and engage with texts in different ways. Not only this, we want children to develop a love of reading, to choose books not because they have to, but because they want to. We want our children to be excited at the prospect of what they might learn from a book, to engage with what they read and form their own opinions about the topic.

We are aiming to develop a culture of reading where everyone, staff included, reads widely and often. While at Barwic Parade, children should form their own opinions about the type of books they most enjoy, they should develop and expand their vocabulary through reading or being read to and should broaden their knowledge and imaginations. Through high-quality, effective teaching and a wide range of reading experiences, we want to provide children with the vital skills needed for later life, to broaden their knowledge and experiences through books and inspire them to become life-long readers.

Implementation

• Planning across the school meets the National Curriculum for English and Early Learning Goal expectations.
• Daily phonics sessions take place in reception, year 1 and for any other child further up school accessing phonics.
• A book band system is used to ensure that children throughout the school have a book of suitable challenge for them to read. It is expected that by year 4, children are fluent enough to be ‘free readers’, able to comprehend more challenging texts which are also provided within classrooms and the school library.
• Guided reading sessions from years 2-5 follow the features of reciprocal reading, including a focus on prediction, clarifying, questioning, explaining and summarising.
• Guided reading is taught daily, with one session a week dedicated to a ‘big read’ where children read a longer section to develop stamina.
• Year 6 reading is taught following the strategies introduced as part of the North Yorkshire Reading Project. Children in year 6 also access the carefully selected guided reading texts during additional sessions to allow them time to read with stamina and for pleasure.
• For the lowest 20% of readers, additional 1-1 reading sessions will take place with class teachers and teaching assistants – daily where possible. These are known as our ‘rapid reader’ sessions.
• Texts are selected to provide a wide range of genres, writing styles, authors, diversity and challenge. A mix of fiction, non-fiction and poetry is included with wider curriculum links where possible.
• Children across school have access to the school library to promote reading for pleasure.
• Children are encouraged to read at home daily and this is recorded in planners. During Friday celebration assemblies, children are awarded reading certificates for reaching milestones per 25 reads at home.
• Reading is celebrated through class readers, theme days or weeks, author visits and theatre/performance trip.

Impact

Our reading curriculum has been developed to meet the needs of all the children we teach and ensures that when children leave Barwic Parade, they have a life-long love of learning instilled within them. Reading and reading achievements are always highly celebrated within school. We understand how vital it is to engage children with books and have been successful doing this in a number of ways including: book fairs, class readers, drama performances, class reading buddies, secret storytellers and reading cafés with parents.

Formative assessment strategies are used by teachers to track children's progress, attainment and to identify areas of focus. Use of effective questioning and discussion, as well as tasks set, allows for all planning to be relevant to the needs of the class and adapted to suit individual learners with different needs. Skills are taught in small steps, they are practised and they are repeated and revisited to enable children to deepen their understanding and improve their fluency. By breaking down new skills (whether it be decoding words or how to summarise the main theme of a paragraph), children at Barwic are better equipped to apply their knowledge in reading across all subjects to a high standard.

​​