Reading

Intent

At St Michael’s Junior School, we aim to develop children into enthusiastic readers who value reading as a key life skill. We are dedicated to enabling our pupils to become lifelong readers and we believe reading is key for academic success. Regardless of background, ability or additional needs, we want all children to become fluent confident readers who enjoy the reading experience. The development of curiosity, creativity, challenge and independence runs through the core of our learning intentions.

Children will be competent in the arts of speaking and listening. From our younger children using language to express themselves and extending their vocabulary to our older children making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate.

Our aim is to provide children with the key reading skills to build on year-on-year, that can be used and developed throughout each phase of their education and prepare them for secondary school.

We aim to ensure all children understand what they are reading and enhance and deepen their comprehension skills, beginning their pathway to independence and becoming fluent readers.

Implementation

Reading is a key skill necessary to access learning across all areas of the curriculum. A range of genres of text are included across the curriculum to ensure a wide range of skill and a broad knowledge and understanding is developed. We aim for all children to have lots of story reading experiences, reading a wide variety of genres and text types. This in turn will create a wide and varied bank of vocabulary and language for children to apply to their own compositions. Staff will model reading strategies through sharing class stories, encouraging a love of literature, an enjoyment of reading for pleasure and igniting their curiosity. We use discussion in order to learn; children will be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and opinions.

The objectives of the national curriculum are followed closely and have been embedded into St Michael’s reading progression document. ‘Book Club’ reading lessons ensure the teaching of reading skills are sequential and develop the children’s knowledge and understanding term-on-term and year-on-year. Lessons inspire children’s curiosity and creativity, embedding their skills into memory and then enabling them to apply their knowledge independently when completing a variety of reading tasks.

Our reading sequence is structured throughout the year, as follows:

Shared reading of a class text ensures children receive the modelling for how to read and interpret a text. Children are to share in the reading of a class text and discuss a variety of genres and literary devices with their class teacher.

At the beginning of every school day, children have fifteen minutes of Accelerated Reader time. This gives children to the opportunity to choose their own texts, based on their likes and dislikes and set their own level of challenge. Children can choose their own books from the library and work alongside their class teachers to ensure their books inspire them and create joyful reading experiences.

When children start their reading journey in year 3, we continue to reflect on their phonics understanding using the ELS scheme. Additional intervention is given to those who have specific need for it. This is alongside our teaching of the spelling curriculum, using the Rising Stars spelling scheme. In addition to phonics intervention, class teachers also ensure they read 1:1 with those children who may need additional support, based on children’s individual needs.

Impact

Reading assessment is ongoing in every ‘Book Club’ lesson through verbal feedback and class discussion; the lesson’s LJ (Learning Journey) is also ticked when the objective has been met or achieved. Through verbal feedback and marking, pupils are given detailed responses and next steps in order to develop each child personally, and provide all children with opportunities to edit and improve their understanding. Children’s reading comprehension is assessed against the National Curriculum objectives to infer their next steps, consolidate children’s understanding of specific objectives and challenge pupils to achieve even higher. These assessments are completed through a variety of different tasks, including formal reading comprehension tasks. Accelerated Reader STAR reading tests and book quizzes also aid the assessment of children’s overall understanding of reading skills. All children will be monitored and assessed at different levels to ensure a rigorous, robust and progressive curriculum meeting the needs of all children.

The effective planning of the activities, targeted support and appropriate challenge in reading lessons ensures that all children are able to meet their full potential.

Pupil voice is used to enable class teachers and school leaders to assess the impact and enjoyment of reading across the curriculum. Self and peer assessment is also embedded into daily practice to give the children opportunities to discuss their own reading and understanding.

The senior leadership team closely monitors all children’s books and holds pupil progress meetings each term to monitor every child’s individual learning needs and progress in reading.

Progression Document