Reading

Shared Reading

Shared reading takes place within the English lesson, at the beginning of a unit of work. It involves a class considering a text, and sessions are characterised by explicit teaching of specific reading strategies.  The texts selected are quality texts, including multimodal formats, which reflect the teaching objectives.

Guided Reading

From Reception to Y6, guided reading takes place with a group of children of similar ability, outside the dedicated English hour, once a week for every group, whilst the rest of the class work independently on a carousel of purposeful, English based tasks.

During guided reading, the responsibility for reading shifts to the learner. Children read and respond to challenging and stimulating texts, with the teacher supporting, modelling and facilitating.

It is intended that guided reading provides a forum for children to demonstrate what they have learned about reading and to further develop and extend their reading and comprehension skills in each of the content domains.

The day after their guided reading session, children are given the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to independently apply the taught skills in a follow up session.

Individual Reading

Children have access to graded books from a variety of reading schemes - including Oxford Reading Tree, Collins, Usborne Rigby Stars, Ginn, All Aboard, Big Cat, Story Chest and Sunshine - to support the development of their individual reading skills. Children start the reading schemes in FS and continue until they become competent independent readers. They can then choose from a wide variety of books from the class collection or school library. Once a child moves on to become a ‘free reader’ a colour-coded sticker system is in place in the library to continue to guide pupils to books of an appropriate level / content. In FS-KS1 the children take home 2/3 books per week from the reading scheme to read at home.

Reading is an important element of the home/school partnership and the reading record is used to encourage and support parents in helping their child read for meaning. Parents are encouraged to use differentiated reading cards to help support their child’s reading at home.

In FS/KS1, children are heard read individually by an adult in school at least once a week.

Reading is not restricted to the Literacy lesson. Many opportunities are provided for children to practise and extend their reading in other subjects. Reading for pleasure and enjoyment is given a high priority and sufficient time is set aside for this.

Teachers also read a class novel or short story as part of a ‘story-time’ session at the end of most days. Each year group features an ‘author of the month’ to introduce them further to high quality texts and writers.

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