Reading

Intent

Reading plays a fundamental role in education and society. At Cheadle Heath Primary, we want all pupils to become confident, fluent readers who develop a love of reading. We provide children with high quality texts and opportunities to practise a range of reading skills to support them in building their knowledge of the world, vocabulary and ability to decode, understand and enjoy prose, poetry and non-fiction.

We aim for children to become confident in:

  • using knowledge and strategies to decode new words
  • using context to determine the meaning of new/unfamiliar words and phrases
  • retrieving information from a wide range of fiction and nonfiction texts
  • making inferences by using their background knowledge and information in the texts
  • understanding the choices authors make and why they employ particular words, phrases and sentence structures
  • understanding how and why different genres and text types are structured differently
  • reading diverse texts and drawing insights from texts that help them consider different cultures, histories, perspectives and voices
  • forming, summarising and sharing their opinions of texts
  • tranferring reading skills to other domains, whether that is other subjects or reading outside of school.

Implementation

In lessons, we spend time explicitly teaching new knowledge and vocabulary so pupils understand the context of what they’re reading. We model reading to children and ask lots of questions to check and consolidate understanding. Each week, we spend time learning and practising a specific reading skill such as summarising, predicting or making inferences. As children move through the school, they continue to improve their reading skills through engaging with increasingly ambitious and varied texts, leaving us ready for their next stage of education.

To ensure reading breadth and progression, we have reading schemes and levelled books available in our school. Reading schemes are structured sets of books that grow gradually more challenging over time. Children begin reading on a particular ‘book band’ (level) and when they are ready, they move to the next book band. Most schemes are very phonic-based at the beginning. Children will take two books home each week – one from a reading scheme for your child to read to you and one chosen by the child for you to read aloud to them, or, for older pupils, to read by themselves. Reading for both pleasure and purpose is important and we encourage you to help your children to increase the challenge and variety of books they choose.

Key features to our approach to the teaching of reading include:

  • Three reading lessons with a single focus text per week
  • Both background knowledge and key vocabulary (Tier 2) are taught explicitly with opportunities for pupils to deomstrate newly acquired knowledge and using and vocabulary
  • Teachers model reading and explore prosodic features (e.g. intonation, emphasis, pace) and structure of texts with pupils
  • Pupils will read independently and in paris and demonstrate comprehension through answering questions independently
  • Each week, the lesson sequence will have a focus skill which teacher model to and with pupils. This may be a broader reading skill (e.g. making inferences, predicting) or may focus on something more specific (e.g. true or false question structures) or another area pupils need to practise further.

Impact

Through our focus on both knowledge and skills, our reading programme supports pupils in developing the mental models and skills required to become competent, active and reflective readers. We not only want pupils to develop a love of reading, but to understand the crucial role reading plays in learning about and understanding the world they and others participate in.

Over time, pupils will become more fluent and confident readers with an increasingly secure ability to comprehend, infer, summarise, predict and form opinions. We assess continuously through informal assessments in class and formally through termly summative assessments. Where children are not meeting age-related expectations, additional support is offered in class and in interventions to ensure all pupils make strong progress.

 

How parents/carers can help:

For all children to become confident and fluent readers, they need to read a lot. Therefore, for younger pupils, we ask that you read with your child for approximately 15 minutes per night. For older, pupils encouraging them to read 20 minutes (or longer if they choose) and discussing their reading with them. This small amount of time can have a big impact on your child's learning.  Thank you for your support with such an important matter.

  • Join and visit your local library to access free books and reading resources.

  • Encourage your child to read a range of texts, specifically topics and text types they might not naturally choose. Please see our links for suggested texts and authors from different ages.

  • Encourage your child to carry a book with them wherever you go.

  • Make time for reading together that is quiet without distractions (phones, TV etc.).

  • Share a range of texts e.g. newspaper articles, recipes, instructions for games.

  • Watch and discuss the news and informational programmes. This will help build background knowledge and vocabulary.

  • Search ‘free online stories for children’. For example, website such as www.booktrust.org.uk  have popular read-along stories for EYFS/KS1.

  • Not sure what books to read next? Visit websites such as www.booktrust.org.uk, www.toppsta.com and www.lovereading4kids.co.uk for up to date book reviews and suggestions.

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