We are all readers
Our Aims
- Reading and books are at the centre of our curriculum.
- Recognise that being able to read well is a key life skill for children.
- Believe that every child can learn to read with the right teaching and support.
- Develop a whole-school strategy to promote reading for pleasure.
- Build time for all children to read independently, read aloud and be read to during the school day.
- Believe that every teacher and staff member is an advocate for reading.
- Involve parents to ensure the culture for reading extends to home.
All classes are named after a children's author. We start off the year becoming familiar with the class author and reading one of the books. Children become immersed in the text through lots of discussion, drama, art and writing activities. Across the school, work carried out on the texts and authors is showcased on displays, as we look to put a love of reading into everything we do.
Reading in school
Polly Ho-Yen was nice enough to send our Year 6 class Ho-yen a quick message about reading and writing stories! Watch below:
Whole-Class Texts
Every half term each year group’s reading lessons will be based around a high-quality, engaging text. The texts have been carefully chosen to introduce children to a variety of authors and genres and there is a classic text in each year group. Children enjoy reading the book together with lots of discussion around what they are reading. Discussion is based around VIPERS questioning and children will make predictions about what will happen next, summarise what they have read, clarify the meaning of words and phrases and pose questions that they would want answered by continuing to read the book. They look in detail at different characters and infer how a character is feeling from what they say and what they do. Children are given plenty of opportunites to develop their fluency through echo-reading, choral reading, pre-reading and re-reading sections of the text.
Non-Fiction & Poetry
As well as reading these texts children learn reading skills through looking at a variety of non-fiction texts. These relate to the class reader giving children the general knowledge to help them further unsderstand the fiction text they are covering. As well as this, we study and explore poetry (again sometimes linking with the whole-class text) and we encourage children to discuss vocuablary, author meaning, practise performimg and learn full poems or verses by heart.
Reading Across the Curriculum
Children also read a range of non-fiction texts and extracts in other subjects - Science, History, Geography, RE and of course the quality texts that we use in our writing lessons.
Children have many opportunities to read aloud throughout the school day and also read with a teacher or teaching assistant regularly during the week.
Reading at home
Children in Year 3 & 4 are given a reading record that goes home with them each night. Ideally, we would like to see that children are reading with somebody else: a parent, a grandparent or an older brother or sister. When they read parents should make a note in the reading record showing how many pages they have read and are encouraged to write a comment. Some children will also be offered a Reading Record in Years 5 & 6 and we encourage these children to continue to read with others each evening and discuss what they have read. Those children who we feel will benefit from more practise will also have many opportunities to read with adults in school throughout the day.
We encourage children to continue to read for pleasure in their own time and recognise the value and many benefits that children get from reading a wide range of books. Our aim is to build up stamina for reading; as children move through the school they become confident reading a larger amount of text.
Reading Events
Scholastic Book Fairs
We have two book fairs booked in for this year. Just like in the Spring term last year these will coincide with Parent’s Evenings. Parents are encouraged to take their children along to the book fair and browse and purchase the books on offer. A percentage of the money raised is given to the school. Last year we were able to spend the commission on Whole Class Reading texts.
World Book Day
Each year we celebrate World Book Day. We encourage children to dress up as a book character. Special reading events take place across the day and children with the most impressive costumes (homemade are the best, rather than spending lots of money on shop bought outfits) Each year we also run a creative competition e.g Desiging a book scene in a shoe box, book themed bake off or book face photograph competiton.
Pyjamarama Day
Each year children and many staff enjoyed another fabulous day with a reading focus and are able to come to school in their Pjs.
Book Clubs
Book Clubs have been incredibly successful in our school. Children have been invited to join groups where children are given the opportunity to read a book together and discuss what they have read, what they enjoyed about it and have the opportunity to discuss anything that may have confused them. Children love reading books with their friends in a social way and have been opened to a range of different authors and genres that they may have not been aware of before. As a school we have been lucky to be provided with sets of books from publishers and have used money raised through Book Fairs to add to our sets of books.
After reading books with their friends children have written reviews and we have had a number of children who have successfully received a Blue Peter badge for reading.
