The teaching of reading focuses on developing pupils’ competence in both word reading and comprehension. We believe that reading is fundamental to education, and we use up-to-date research and guidance to regularly audit and evaluate our teaching of reading.
Our Primary Excellence Partnership Reading Strategy outlines all aspects of the teaching of Reading in our school.
At our school, whole-class reading lessons take place from Year 2 upwards (EYFS and Year 1 develop their word reading and comprehension through their daily phonics lessons). There are three types of reading lesson that take place across the school:
- Fluency: Fluency lessons provide children with the opportunity to hear an adult model of fluent reading before having significant time to practise their own fluent reading. With each practice, a child should be building their accuracy, automaticity and prosody.
- Extended Reading: Extended reading lessons provide children with the opportunity to actively engage in longer pieces of text. Within these lessons, children are active participants in the reading, listening to others read aloud and being ready to take their turn. Extended reading lessons also provide opportunity for textual discussion to deepen understanding.
- Close Reading (from Y4): During close reading lessons, a shorter piece of text is read by the children step-by-step, with plenty of discussion throughout the reading. Meaning is established and the text is analysed; these lessons provide an opportunity for deeper analysis of key concepts.
Reading comprehension skills are taught through the use of ‘Reading Hats’, each of which represents a different reading skill. These ‘Hats’ are used across the school and have been mapped into our progression documents.
Regular reading at school and at home makes a real difference: we ask that parents support children in their reading by hearing them read aloud as often as possible and by sharing a love of reading at home. The Book Trust and Oxford Owl have some fantastic tips for reading with children of all ages: https://www.booktrust.org.uk/books-and-reading/tips-and-advice/reading-tips/ and https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-at-home/.
Reading for pleasure:
Outside of Reading lessons, teachers foster a love of reading in children in many different ways:
- reading aloud stories, poems, rhymes and non-fiction, and making recommendations to children
- giving children the opportunity to read widely and often for pleasure
- creating social reading environments whereby book-talk is encouraged
- providing regular opportunities to visit the school and local libraries in order explore and borrow books
- making reading visible and attractive in classrooms and around the school
- celebrating reading successes and encouraging children to take part in reading challenges such as the Summer Reading Challenge
Reading across the curriculum:
As well as learning to read, children should read to learn – this means applying their knowledge of decoding and comprehending in order to gather information for themselves. We provide ample opportunities for our children to read widely across the curriculum in order to develop their substantive knowledge, for example by reading maps or information in geography, reading about a key historical period, or reading instructions in order to carry out a scientific investigation. We aim for children to read in every lesson wherever possible.