Reading

Who can I speak to about Reading? Your child’s class teacher will be able to answer any questions about your child’s reading. You can also speak to our Reading leaders; Dr Kirby (Early Reading) and Miss Williams (Key Stage 2). 

Curriculum Intent for Reading and Phonics : We encourage all of our pupils to be readers, who select texts for purpose and pleasure. Immersing children in a culturally rich and diverse range of books and reading material is at the heart of everything we do. Using a range of high quality teaching resources, including ‘The Power of Reading’ program and our own bespoke VIPERS, we aim to improve achievement in reading and raise levels of knowledge, pleasure and confidence. We encourage all our pupils and families to be life-long readers.

LHPSN Approach to the Teaching of Reading

English Policy – click here to see how we ensure every child becomes a confident, fluent and passionate reader, quickly. 

We aim to provide as many opportunities as possible to allow the children to develop the full range of reading skills that will enable them to become mature and enthusiastic readers. These skills include: decoding,  exploring vocabulary, making inferences, predicting, explaining authorial intent and summarising. We teach these skills through; discussions as a class, group and individual reads, exposure to a range of texts in literacy and other curriculum areas , becoming familiar with texts, poetry and performance.

We ensure we meet the Early Years and National Curriculum objectives by:

    • Ensuring our pupils read easily, fluently and with good understanding
    • Developing the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
    • Ensuring children acquire a wide vocabulary and understanding of the conventions of reading
    • Teaching children to appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage

In EYFS and Key Stage 1, learning to read through phonics is a huge part of our reading journey. We have invested in progressive phonics books that only contain the GPCs (letters and the sounds that they make) that your child has secured in phonics lessons. This allows them to build confidence with their decoding and fluency, and are closely matched to each child’s independent reading ability. Our guided reading texts provide many opportunities to develop the children’s comprehension skills. We focus on core skills, such as exploring vocabulary, making inferences and predictions, retrieving from the text and sequencing key events. These texts have a small ‘s’ sticker on the front, which indicates that some shared support would be beneficial to further ask questions and stretch their understanding of the text. 

Everyday, teachers read aloud high quality texts to children to model fluency, expression and most importantly to promote a love of reading- something we are very passionate about at LHPSN! Over the course of the year, the children will listen to a range of stories and poems, learning to join in with repeated phrases, for example, in traditional tales and also, sharing information in non-fiction books. Teachers use their subject knowledge to link books to other areas of the curriculum where this is appropriate and develop a range of reading and writing activities for the children to explore and enjoy.

In KS2, all children take part in a daily, extended literacy lesson within which the children read a high quality text specifically chosen to compliment the literacy curriculum and themes that are being studied. This involves the class teacher modelling reading to their class. Every child during the week will be invited to read aloud. If a text is particularly challenging, children may also be given a ‘pre-read’ or chance to read in smaller group with support prior to the lesson. Some children may need to continue reading small group session if they have been identified as still needing support with the mechanics of reading (e.g. fluency and decoding). This is led by the class teacher or teaching assistant. All children take a book home to read – a book from the Oxford Reading Scheme. 

Supporting those who need that little bit extra : We understand that all children develop at different rates and follow different paths into reading. Children may be supported by receiving additional one to one reading sessions or specific group sessions , which allows for specific skills (e.g. comprehension, exploring words meanings) to be targeted and addressed. ‘Toe by Toe’ is also a program that we use to help children who find decoding and reading fluently difficult. We have found this highly successful; not only in boosting children’s reading ability, but also their self-esteem and confidence. 

We know LHPSN parents are always keen to support their children, so we hold workshops throughout the year . We particularly recommend that parents of pupils in Year 2 and 6 attend, as the children take statutory tests in these subjects in May for key stage 2 and in June for key stage 1. 

Many parents have found this workshop useful:

“I understand better how the children learn to read now so I can support my daughter when she gets stuck on a word and I know the strategies she has to work it out by herself.”

“There’s a lot of parenting classes when you have a new baby, but nothing for when they start school. These workshops have definitely helped me to navigate the next part of my child’s journey.”

Parent Workshops

Attached is also the PowerPoint from our parent workshop, which breaks down the way in which reading is taught in Key Stage 2: Parent Workshop

Visit the Phonics tab under our curriculum pages to find our Early Reading Presentation.

What you can do to help:  Reading Support – click here to find out the practical ways we support reading and how you can adopt them at home. Reading with your child is vital. Research shows that it’s the single most important thing you can do to help your child’s education. It’s best to read little and often, so try to put aside some time for it every day. Children should be encouraged to read aloud and read on their own, but being read to is really important too, so don’t overlook the bedtime story. Focus on encouraging your child to read fluently and with expression, understand plots and broaden their vocabulary. Reading is also a good way to build an understanding of how punctuation and grammar are used. Most importantly, continue to enjoy what you do together, give lots of encouragement and expand the reading experience to keep your child switched on and if they are reading something they are not enjoying – STOP- and choose something different. 

 

Take a look at some of the weblinks below for inspiration: