Given our school context, where many children have English as a second language and where few have the opportunity to read to an adult, we invest heavily in Phonics and Reading. We expect our children to be able to read for Pleasure with understanding across the curriculum. We have planned our curriculum so that this is accessed and enjoyed through a number of interlinking strategies. At all ages, children are encouraged to take ownership of their reading.
Children in school read a range of books; the reading schemes in EYFS & KS1 are Oxford Reading Tree, Tree Tops, Build & Blend (Anna Lucas), Project X. We also have a plethora of quality texts that the children are exposed to and encouraged to read. As the children move into KS2, the children have access to the above but also use Accelerated Reader.
Phonics
Our school follows the ‘Supersonic Phonics Friends’ Scheme, which has been created by Phonics expert Anna Lucas and designed by the artist, Fiona Cameron. It is a fully systematic, synthetic phonics approach ranging from the simple to the more complex spellings of the alphabetic code. This programme is validated by the DfE. It is taught throughout EYFS and KS1. In KS2, it is used as an intervention strategy.
Phonics at Clarendon ensures consistency for all children’s learning phonics at every stage. Children have the chance to participate in pre-and post-teaching sessions to make sure their learning is ingrained and enables phonics progression, which is demonstrated in the application to reading and writing. To foster high levels of engagement through a variety of activities that support the reading and writing of certain sounds, teachers encourage children to engage in active learning.
Dependent upon the phase children are working at, all books are matched to their Phonics ability. Children choose their books based on their interests within the colour band that is purposeful for them. Book Matching has allowed children to take independence in their learning, exposing them to sounds they’ve been taught, not heavily relying on adult encouragement when reading, giving children a sense of achievement. Children are given Phonics Packs at the beginning of each EYFS/KS1 Year to support them with their early reading at home, and Parent Workshops are scheduled to support parents with learning at home.
Phonics Toolkits provide all the resources needed for staff to provide quality first teaching alongside the ‘Supersonic Phonics Friends’ Scheme.
Reading for Pleasure with Understanding
We value and promote ‘Reading for Pleasure with Understanding’ as our ethos for developing children’s learning across the curriculum, where they have ownership of their reading and maintain their own reading record. The key strategies are Reading Skills by Thinking Aloud, Read Aloud- Think Aloud, independent Reading for Pleasure, Reading to an adult and Read Aloud – enjoying ‘Brilliant Books’ read by an adult. Children across the school access these opportunities, and all adults in school undergo an in-house training programme to ensure consistency of teaching. Children in Year 1 access the strategies progressively when they are ready, increasingly so from the Spring term. However, teachers begin to model Read Aloud- Think Aloud from the autumn term and use Read Aloud when reading Brilliant Books to the children.
Reading Skills by Thinking Aloud:
Read aloud, Think Aloud:
The Reading Working Wall supports children’s learning with visuals, vocabulary, very important phrases/words, teacher modelling, text annotation and child-generated questions. Children working independently use this wall to help them with their conversation preparation, and it is also used as a recap during the next lesson, ensuring children are remembering more and understanding the previous skill taught.
In order to check how children are progressing, an unseen comprehension is set weekly to provide checks and balances against our teaching and learning approaches. These scores are recorded on a spreadsheet and reviewed half-termly by the reading team. These help to inform teachers of the gaps in reading. Once the text has been completed as an unseen comprehension, teachers have the opportunity to revisit these texts during a reading lesson. Each half term, children in years 1 – 6 also take a reading test, which is in a similar style to national tests.
Our teaching strategies help children ‘work out’ what words and phrases in a text mean to deepen their understanding and precision in their responses. Teachers choose texts with a specific learning purpose in mind, which is challenging for the children and may use iPads to support visualization and context. There is regular access to non-fiction texts such as First News and the literacy spine displayed in class shows the range of books across the curriculum.
Our children find concepts such as inference difficult to master. Teachers are supported in this through the systematic approach and pre-planned sequences available, including a range of appropriate texts with models. In school, we define inference as being able to find something out by looking at clues and using prior knowledge. This means the ability to go beyond the text based upon personal experience, background knowledge or opinion of the reader. If the text says, ‘he put on a warm coat, hat and scarf,’ the reader infers it is cold. Text detective approaches, which focus on the search for clues, understanding conventions, and linguistic knowledge (in particular of vocabulary and grammar), are a strong feature of our systematic approach to teaching. Children learn the difference between ‘in-text’ or ‘online’ (e.g. retrieval) and ‘in brain’ or ‘offline’ (e.g. inference) methods.
Reading challenge cards based on domains supports teachers and children in developing their own questions and precision in their verbal and written responses. Children are expected to understand the reading domains and this is progressively introduced from EYFS. In Year 1, children begin to use the Reading Challenge Fans and the Reading working wall when they are ready to do so.
KS1 domains: 1a draw on knowledge of vocabulary to understand texts; 1b identify/explain key aspects of fiction and non-fiction texts, such as characters, events, titles and information; 1c identify and explain the sequence of events in texts; 1d make inferences from the text; 1e predict what might happen on the basis of what has been read so far.
KS2 domains: 2a give/explain the meaning of words in context; 2b retrieve and record information / identify key details from fiction and non-fiction; 2c summarise main ideas from more than one paragraph; 2d make inferences from the text / explain and justify inferences with evidence from the text; 2e predict what might happen from details stated and implied; 2f identify/explain how information / narrative content is related and contributes to meaning as a whole; 2g identify/explain how meaning is enhanced through choice of words and phrases; 2h make comparisons within the text.
These reading domains have been incorporated into our reading targets, which break down the domains into smaller steps in each year group and across year 1 to 6. This enables progress to be clearly seen between year groups and across the year. These domains and target numbers are included in the child’s reading lesson in their WALT (we are learning today). This shows clearly which domain/target the children are focusing on. This is part of the monitoring cycle.
Teachers choose challenging, informative and enjoyable texts from a variety of sources e.g. a Literacy spine teaching text, Cracking Comprehension, appropriate Head Start/ Guinness World Record/ Read Write Ink, texts, books from The Oxford Reading Tree scheme, Big Cat Collins scheme, a range of authors and cross curricular texts (e.g. from Science or History) enabling children access to a range of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and play-scripts from across the curriculum. Teachers are encouraged to use texts which link to the children’s current learning in other subjects or the book they are using for Writing or their brilliant book. This offers children the opportunity to make more tangible links.
A Planning and Evaluation Reading File is maintained. Reading evaluative records are provided for each child. This highlights each individual child and their specific, personalized gaps in learning. This enables teachers/ TA to tailor questions to their specific area for development. Digital evidence is saved on All Staff for questioning, summarising and reading proficiency.
Independent Reading for Pleasure:
Children have a daily opportunity to read for pleasure, choosing whatever is of interest to them. This could include their home reader, reading challenge book or a book they have brought from home. During this session, children are listened to read their home reader, on a one-to-one basis, by an adult. Once per half term, the teacher will write a detailed record of the child’s reading ability in the child’s reading record. Where the reading gap needs to be closed or accelerated progress required, children are heard read at least once per week by teaching assistants, teachers, parent volunteers or Year 5/6 Reading Buddies allocated to each class, in addition to the Reading Skills sessions. We prioritize our Vulnerable Groups.
In Individual Reading, the child practises without the teacher’s help. The component skills need to be so well practised that they no longer require conscious attention, and the reader can concentrate instead on other features. Motivation for reading is critical. The teacher ensures that each child’s appetite for reading can be satisfied by the variety of books available.
We support children in developing reading stamina so that they become absorbed in a text with complete involvement and high levels of concentration, which creates a ‘flow of experience’. We develop this through: choosing ‘just right’ books; setting individual targets; teaching self-regulation strategies; creating purposeful opportunities and celebrating success.
Read Aloud – Enjoying listening to our Brilliant Books:
Adults read to children across the school at the end of every day using a Read Aloud approach. The teacher will read with expression and explain vocabulary as part of reading without interrupting the flow or enjoyment. This enables children to:
Wider Reading Opportunities
This is facilitated by:
Home Reading
We encourage children to read at home, wherever possible, to an adult, a minimum of three times per week.
In Year 3 – 6, children will read a real book from the class or school library, which is within their book level as assigned by Accelerated Reader. Once children have read the book, they will take a quiz online. In Year 1 – 2, children read books from their book band and their own choices from the library. They are encouraged to maintain an eclectic diet of genres and can read their own books at home. Although ownership of reading rests with children, parents are encouraged to read with their children and make a comment in the home school planner.
Home reading books are organized by coloured book levels that link to the NC levels. Teachers assign pupils to a book band through a combination of teacher assessment and test results and an ongoing ‘evaluative record’ in the reading file. Once children are in Year 2, their reading is assessed each half term and there is scope for the professional judgement of teachers to move a child forwards or backwards within the book band scheme.
My Reading Record
Children have ownership of their reading and recording in their ‘My Reading Record’ as soon as they are able to do so independently and at a reasonable speed. Where children are not yet ready to do so, e.g. EYFS and Year 1, adults write the children’s comments in the reading record.
Whenever children are heard read, or when they participate in an adult guided reading session in a guided reading session, this is recorded in My Reading Record using appropriate stamps (Guided reading, Comprehension, Reading Buddy) together with the text and objective. Children, when reading independently, write a comment to show how they have engaged with the text using a set of sentence stems to help them.
Teachers write a half-termly detailed comment about the child’s reading so that parents are aware of reading objectives and progress being made.
Reading across the curriculum
Teachers plan reading opportunities across the curriculum using reading strategies and skills consistently which travel across all subjects e.g. in Learning Links, studying a non- fiction text about the plague and in Writing, using Wrap around the text and Read, Write, Perform to comprehend, focus on themes, identification of conventions, how feelings of a character change etc to understand the writer’s intended impact on the reader. These skills can also be practised during a Skills Development Activity session in the Reading Skills carousel.
Reading targets can be achieved through the most sensible medium and subject and teachers make a note of where this learning is taking place on their Reading Planning Tracker, which is kept alongside the Speaking Planning Tracker in the Reading Planning and Evaluation folder.
Clarendon Reading Challenge
Digital evidence
