Vision for Reading –
The vision at St. Wilfrid’s is that all children are confident, able and fluent readers who are developed culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. We aspire for every child to develop a true love of reading as this will open up a world of possibilities for them, supporting them in achieving their dreams and aspirations. Every child should be able to read and enjoy reading a rich variety of genres and authors. All of our staff aspire to be outstanding leaders and practitioners in reading as our children truly deserve this.
Our aim is to develop and foster a love of reading from Foundation Stage to Key Stage Two, ensuring our children enjoy reading aloud and to themselves and can access a range of fiction and non-fiction texts. We aspire for all children to be able to read an age appropriate book confidently and fluently, answering a range of questions accurately.
By the end of Year 1, we want all children to have learnt all 44 phonemes and be able to apply these so they can read confidently and fluently.
By the time our children leave us in Year 6, we hope that their love for literature, through wide-spread reading, is truly embedded and that this stays with them throughout their education.
Intent –
Our intent is to deliver the National Curriculum through teaching structured phonics, guided reading and English lessons. As reading underpins the whole curriculum, we ensure that the children are immersed in a variety of high quality and vocabulary rich texts. Reading awakens our children’s imagination and shapes their creativity and life experiences, meaning our children do not just learn to read, they read to learn.
Through our explicit reading progression document, we ensure that we have breadth and depth of the National Curriculum so that reading skills (decoding and comprehension) are recapped and built upon, laying a firm foundation for KS3.
We are determined that every pupil will learn to read regardless of their background, needs or abilities. We intend for all pupils, including the weakest readers, to make sufficient progress to meet or exceed age related expectations.
Implementation -
Language and communication is vital for all of our pupils. We explicitly teach vocabulary from Nursery to Year 6 using a language acquisition program called Word Aware. Our Reception pupils also have access to a programme called NELI (Nuffield Early Language Intervention) which provides targeted small group and one-to-one support for children who would benefit from additional support with language and early literacy skills. In every class, we also ensure that the children are immersed in language rich display, texts and discussions.
The teaching of phonics is vital and begins in Nursery. We teach phonics using a Government validated scheme called Bug Club Phonics which is taught daily in Nursery, Reception and Year One. The children are assessed on a regular basis so that they can be given an appropriate reading book. All children in Year Two have three lesson of phonics a week in the Autumn term. Any child who is not secure at their year group’s phonics teaching has access to an intervention to narrow the gap. They continue on a phonics intervention until they are a secure reader. Moving into Key Stage 2, once the children have completed the Bug Club programme, they move to Big Cat banded books, which go from Orange to Pearl bands. When the children have completed these Big Cat banded reading books, showing fluency and understanding of the books read, they become a free reader and are able to choose a green stickered book from the Key Stage 2 Library. These books provide children with a wider selection of genres, authors, themes and layers of meaning. This enables them to become more established readers who are able to infer (read between the lines) as well as interpret and evaluate (read beyond the lines).
Guided Reading is taught in discrete lessons to deepen the children’s inferential, retrieval and decoding skills and to teach vocabulary. The children are exposed to a range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts through whole class teaching. All teachers ensure that explicit reading skills are taught and build upon prior knowledge. These skills are taught to be remembered, as research shows we need to embed knowledge into our pupil’s long term memory. Planning for these lessons comes directly from the school’s reading progression document and this clearly shows how reading skills are re-visited and deepened from Nursery to Year 6 and subsequently Year 7. The teaching of Guided Reading is inclusive and all children have the opportunity to access the class Guided Reading texts, through support, scaffolding and deepening of knowledge and skills. In Nursery and Reception, during guided reading sessions, children are immersed in the books through discussion, questioning, role play, puppets, participation and explicit vocabulary teaching. From Year 1 to Year 6, a daily powerpoint or flipchart is used to plan, deliver and support these sessions. Children complete vocabulary, decoding and comprehension reading activities through discussions and role play (whole class and in groups) as well as completing written tasks in their exercise books.
Teachers also plan additional reading activities around their classes Key Texts which are used to drive the English curriculum. Teachers unpick these key texts with the pupils to ensure they know the structure, organisation and language features of a range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts. They are also used by teachers to model reading aloud fluently and with expression. Writing opportunities are planned, with these key texts being the stimulus for the writing. The school’s English Curriculum Overview outlines the Guided Reading and Key Texts studied in every class over the year as well as the writing opportunities.
We promote a love for reading in a variety of ways to engage all of our children. All classrooms having an inviting reading area with books of interest for all pupils as well as books to support the wider curriculum. The children have access to our appealing libraries which host a range of quality books from a broad range of authors. The children take a book home from the class or school library weekly to read for pleasure or to share with their families.
As a school, we expect our children to read every night at home. For those children who are not able to read at home, then they are heard to read in school. All children are heard to read aloud to an adult at least once a week and those who are not on track to achieve the national standard are heard daily.
We reward our children in many ways for reading at home:
- Daily dojo award if they have read at home;
- Class reward for the best reading percentage each week (extra playtime) and each term (an afternoon of the class’ choice);
- Extra playtime each week for the children who have met the school’s reading at home expectations;
- Reading certificates for individuals during school celebration assemblies;
- Individual prizes for reading every day at the end of every term;
- End of the year ‘Donny Tomlinson Award for Reading’ for a Year 3 pupil.
At St Wilfrid’s, to promote a love of reading further, we arrange author visits, library visits, drama/dance workshops, book fairs, reading competitions and challenges and author studies to inspire our children. To engage our parents in supporting their children with reading, we invite them in regularly for engaging workshops and our Early Years staff post weekly storytelling sessions on our school’s social media platform, where they video themselves reading a book of the week. This modelling of storytelling is promoted in every class where each teacher has daily timetabled storytelling sessions in which books are read to the class for pleasure. There are also opportunities throughout the year for our older Year 6 children to read to our younger children in EYFS and Key Stage 1.
Impact –
Children are articulate and they are motivated to read a range of texts. The children talk positively about reading, whether this be from their personal reading book, their library book or their class guided reading books or key texts.
Reading is inclusive and all children have the opportunity to access their class books, whether this be the book they listen to for pleasure, their key texts or the guided reading texts. Through scaffolding and support, children are immersed in high quality ‘readerly’ and ‘writerly’ texts as well as having their knowledge and skills deepened further.
By the end of Key Stage One our children are fully competent with the phonemes and can read fluently and confidently. All of our pupils are making good progress from Reception to Year 6.
As a Year 6 reader, transitioning into high school, we aspire that children are fluent, confident and able readers, who can access a range of texts for pleasure and enjoyment, as well as use their reading skills to unlock learning and all areas of the curriculum. We firmly believe that reading is the key to all learning and so the impact of our reading curriculum goes beyond the results of the statutory assessments.
Progression Documents
Whole School English Curriculum 2022-2023 (Nursery - Year 6)
Reading progression document - Nursery to Year 7
Resources for parents in supporting children's reading
Family Reading and Vocabulary Workshop Powerpoint - November 2022
Family Reading and Vocabulary Workshop Powerpoint - March 2022
Questions which you can ask your children when they are reading
EYFS Author Visit
On Friday 14th October, EYFS have had a very special visitor. Nursery and Reception were very lucky to meet local author, Kathy Tallentire. She came in to school to read them her story 'Nana Duck' and tell them all about being an author. The children asked her lots of questions, finding out her favourite colour, animal and food! They even found out that she began writing children's books after her daughter was born.
National Poetry Day at St Wilfrid's - Thursday 6th October 2022
This week, every class is learning a poem by heart to perform to the rest of the school on Thursday.
KS2 Library Mural – July 2022
The journey began with a ‘favourite book cover‘ competition. The children’s incredible drawings were picked to be turned into a mural for the library. What began as a blank wall, has turned into a marvellous piece of artwork, which will grace the KS2 library wall for many years to come. A huge thank you to Miss Miah for spending hours of her own time on this project. I am sure you will all agree, she is a fantastic artist and has done incredibly well making the final outcome look just like the children’s drawings.
World Book Day 2022
St Wilfrid’s loved celebrating World Book Day. During the day, every class took part in exciting, creative activities based around books. Children dressed up as a character from a book and brought their favourite books to school. Some of our Year 6 children chose a story to read to the children in Nursery, Reception and Key Stage 1 which the younger children loved. In the lead up to World Book Day, the theatre education company ‘West End in Schools’ visited our school. All classes from Y1 to Y6 took part in a ‘Bringing Books to Life’ dance workshop, studying the book, ‘The Lorax’.
