Reading
At Conway Primary School, we believe reading is the foundation to a successful future. Reading forms the cornerstone of our entire curriculum and so we strive to provide children with the tools they need to go on to become confident, fluent readers who use reading as a tool to access the wider world.
Early Reading
We begin our reading journey in Nursery, where pupils learn to identify and distinguish between different types of sounds.
We use Little Wandle's Foundations for Phonics which helps children tune into sounds and uses lots of rhyme time along with developing a love of reading from the very start of their journey. We have a high focus on phonological awareness as well as listening and attention - ensuring readiness for starting the journey to be lifelong readers.
Throughout EYFS, children are exposed to different nursery rhymes, songs, poetry, and stories which they build upon as they move through their school journey. Each class has their own library area within the classroom where they are encouraged to choose books to take home and share and these can be changed at any point with a minimum expectation of weekly. Children are read to by an adult daily, often more than once through whole class, small group and 1:1 story sharing which includes the repetition of many familiar stories. This helps children to learn the importance of looking at books independently, further building their lifelong love of reading.
Throughout Reception and Y1, children are taught through the rigorous Little Wandle programme which teaches children to associate the phonemes (sounds) that they hear with the graphemes (letters) that are used to represent it in writing. Children are taught one phoneme at a time and practise it until it becomes automatic. Children are also taught to read 'tricky' words. These are words which are common in the books that we read, but we have not yet learnt to blend (read) them. Words like I, was, she are all tricky to begin with. These are displayed in the classroom and practised throughout the day.
The programme also teaches children to apply their phonics knowledge by reading decodable texts. Each week, children will bring home one 'decodable' book. They will have read this book several times across the week and by the time they bring it home, they will be keen to show their family that they can read. They will also bring home a 'sharing' book; this book is not fully decodable and we expect families to read this book to their child(ren) to help us protect the essential family-reading-together time that has shown to be so beneficial for children.
This approach:
- teaches children to decode and blend words
- teaches children to recognise common exception words
- ensures children read storybooks and non-fiction books matched to their growing phonic knowledge
- assesses children regularly to track every child’s progress
- ensures that children develop their handwriting, spelling, writing and comprehension skills alongside their phonics
- increases reading fluency allowing them to focus on comprehension
Workshops are held on a regular basis to ensure that parents can access the reading that is expected of their child and phonics games are also sent home. Teachers go over the sounds with parents to ensure that they know the sounds thereby enabling them to support their children effectively. This is often followed the following week with a story being shared to model the previous week’s learning.
Our Reading Curriculum
Once children have completed the Little Wandle program and are able to read simple stories with 90% fluency, they begin to use the skills they have acquired through phonics teaching which allows them to access more complex texts independently in a whole class setting.
Every year group has dedicated time each day for a reading lesson. At the start of each week, children are explicitly taught vocabulary and definitions that appear in an unfamiliar text to help them comprehend the text throughout the week. The text is read multiple times throughout the week and analysed using a variety of skills such as: summarising, sequencing, retrieving, predicting, and making inferences. This may be read whole class, individually, small groups or by the teacher reading aloud.
We have established a strong link between reading and our wider curriculum at Conway Primary School; our pupils have access to quality texts that are closely linked to what they are currently studying across the curriculum to provide them with extra opportunities to develop their vocabulary and understanding. Every year group has dedicated daily time in their timetable for both the teaching of reading as well as story time; this exposes pupils to a wide range of genres and authors and supports them to develop a love of reading.
Interventions
We have different programmes to support the children with their reading, including reading volunteers and peer to peer reading where the children read with other pupils. Pupils who need support with their reading have access to carefully planned interventions multiple times a week from staff across the school. This ranges from 1:1 phonics intervention in KS1 to small group work in Year Six and lots of in-class work in-between.
Home Reading
For children who are working through the phonics programme, there will be one decodable text - to be read BY the child - and one sharing book - to be read TO the child - sent home each week.
For children who have mastered the art of using phonics to read, they will bring home a sharing book of their choice. This book should be changed at least weekly.
Reading for Pleasure
We want to encourage our children to not only be expert readers, but to identify themselves as readers. To encourage this, we hold reading at the centre of everything we do. Children have access to a range of quality texts in their classroom library that inspire and excite. Our classroom library themes have been carefully thought out and are inviting areas for the children to want to spend time in.
As a staff, we are very vocal about the things we like to read and encourage children to engage in conversations about books that interest them. We also provide lots of opportunities through having different events throughout the year such as World Book Day and performance and poetry assemblies.
EAL
We are fortunate to have so many home languages that add to our school community. We believe that books are magical in every language and encourage our parents and volunteers to come into school to read to the pupils in English and their home languages. This allows the pupils to experience different storytellers and see their familiar stories come to life though someone else’s words. We also have dual-language books that pupils can choose to take home.