Reading at Addison

 

Reading is a vital skill that will support children’s learning across the whole curriculum.  As a school, we will ensure that our children are taught to read with fluency, accuracy and understanding through a variety of discreet and cross-curricular learning opportunities. 

 

Above all, we want children in our school to become enthusiastic, independent and reflective readers. Essentially, we want children to enjoy reading. 

Aims:

• Instil children with a love of reading that lasts for their lifetime, share with them an enthusiasm for children’s literature and help children to recognise the value of reading as a life skill
• Encourage children to become enthusiastic and reflective readers by introducing them to good quality books, from a variety of cultures and in a range of different styles and formats
• Develop our children’s understanding of a variety of text types including non-fiction, fiction, poetry and drama
• Develop children’s confidence, fluency, and independence when reading for different purposes
• Develop children’s abilities to reflect on and have an interest in what they have read and the language and punctuation choices made by the author
• Use drama and role-play, where appropriate, to immerse children in the text
• Ensure our children have sound phonic awareness and use a phonics first approach to reading
• Use ICT systems to access and locate texts

 

Whole School

Reading objectives are taken directly from the 2014 National Curriculum.  Reading skills have been created to ensure that explicit teaching of comprehension skills takes place alongside the Reading objectives.

 

All children take home a reading book and a reading record book. Books from the class reading corners are also available for the children to borrow and read at home.

 

In Reception and Key Stage 1, these books are colour-banded. Books are selected for the children according to their phonic ability.

 

For KS2, a number of books have been identified as age-related texts for each group to aid pitch. It is the teacher's responsibility to ensure that children are reading at the correct colour band level, change their reading books regularly and read a range of styles, genres and authors. Each class also has a 'Class Reader'/Class Author for enjoyment of whole novels.

 

Guided Reading

In Reception and KS1, guided reading takes place daily.  Over each week, the children will read with an adult at least once and in KS1, the children will complete follow up tasks in their Guided Reading book.  During these reading sessions, guided reading notes are made to assess children's word reading and their comprehension skills.  This, plus evidence from individual reading logs and current book bands are then used to inform teacher assessment judgements on word reading at the end of each half term.  End of term reading assessments are also used to support teacher assessment and inform future planning and interventions.

 

In KS1, other reading skills are practised and comprehension work is also completed in Guided Reading books during the sessions.  As part of the carousel, the children will have a 'free read' time to choose books to develop reading for pleasure.

 

The explicit reading skills taught during the guided reading sessions are: retrieval, inference, vocabulary knowledge, sequencing and prediction.

 

KS2 - VIPERS

Over the course of the week the children are explicitly taught the skills of reading (outlined in the National Curriculum and KS2 test domains) through the use of VIPERS: vocabulary, inference, prediction, explain, retrieval and summarising.

 

During a typical session the teacher will share what the content domain/s the children will be focusing on for that session.  Teachers carefully select key vocabulary words they want the children to learn that week and cover a wide range of texts and genre.  Children read during these sessions in a variety of different ways. They may hear the teacher model fluent reading and then reread the same extract themselves.

Children may read individually and feedback, work in groups, take turns in pairs or read aloud to their peers.  Teachers plan key questions each session based on the content domain being focused on.  The children record their learning from these sessions in their Guided Reading books.

 

Children are encouraged to provide evidence for their answer based on a text extract or a picture they have seen in the book.  Where appropriate children are encouraged to use evidence from a range of different places within the text.

 

Recording and Assessment during VIPERS sessions

Teachers focus on specific children during the session. These children can then be assessed based on NC expectations and how they are performing relating to the specific content domain.  Teacher’s will also use reading assessments at the end of each term to support teacher assessment and inform future planning and interventions. Assessment judgements and test scores are made termly.