READING

Reading at St George’s Hanover Square CE Primary School

Reading is integral to learning and we aim to develop a love of reading in all of our learners. At St George’s, we believe that reading is the foundation to accessing the full curriculum and we are determined that every child learns to read and experiences success in reading from the very beginning. It is vital that you establish a reading culture at home too, and make time to read with your child every day. Children who do best in education have had a good foundation in talk and literature at home. Reading to your child and ensuring that they are reading to you regularly is the single most important thing you can do to help them educationally. It also benefits them emotionally and socially. The world makes so much more sense to those that are read to and who read often. Children who see themselves as readers can learn to the full, discover their own talents and interests and explore the limits of their imagination and creativity.

Strategies to Teach Reading

Reading in Reception and KS1

• The foundation of early reading is learning to decode fluently through systematic synthetic phonics. At St George’s, children in Reception and KS1 take part in daily group Read, Write Inc. lessons where they learn synthetic phonics in an integrated way, which links their reading and writing.
• Children learn the English alphabetic code. First, they learn one way to read the 40+ sounds and blend these sounds into words, then learn to read the same sounds with alternative graphemes. They experience success from the very beginning. The phonic books used in Read, Write Inc. lessons are closely matched to their increasing knowledge of phonics and ‘tricky’ words and as children re-read the stories their fluency increases. This helps children to learn to read with a storyteller’s voice.
• In KS1, children have Guided Reading lessons in addition to the Read, Write Inc. programme. They read with an adult at least once a week, and participate in a range of activities to help develop their word reading and comprehension skills, as well as promoting a love of reading for pleasure. Children read banded books matched to their current phonic knowledge and instructional reading level.

Reading in KS2

• In KS2, children take part in whole class Destination Reader lessons every day, with a focus on developing more complex comprehension skills. Destination Reader is an approach to teaching reading at KS2 that can be applied to all texts. Its main focus is on developing key reading strategies which support comprehension and enable a deeper understanding of texts. There is also a focus on partner work and discussion, and children are taught learning behaviours that support dialogue.

Children at the Early Stages of Reading

• We want to make sure every child learns to read in our school. Some children need extra practice when learning to read so we teach these children one-to-one for ten minutes every day – on top of their group lesson. We make sure they ‘keep up’ from the beginning and do not need ‘catch up’ later on.

Reading Assessment

• Children on the Read, Write Inc. programme are grouped according to their reading progress and re- assessed every half term by the Reading Leader – they learn sounds and practise reading every day at exactly the right level.
• Children in KS1 and KS2 are regularly assessed in reading using PM Benchmarking Assessment Resources. The PM Benchmark Reading Assessment Resources have been designed to explicitly assess children’s instructional and independent reading levels using unseen, meaningful texts. By providing accurately levelled fiction and non-fiction texts ranging progressively from emergent levels to reading age 12, teachers are able to rigorously access children’s fluency and retelling strategies while determining their comprehension within and beyond the text.

Reading at Home

At St George’s we believe that reading is the key to success. We know through research that reading regularly and developing strong reading skills from an early age improves children's performance across the curriculum. It is important that children read daily at home as well as at school.

Children at the Early Stages of Reading

Children take home three reading books each week:

• A copy of the Read, Write Inc. storybook they have read in class to practise reading what they can already read;
• A book at their current instructional reading level to read with the support of an adult;
• A book they have chosen themselves from their class reading corner to share with an adult and read for pleasure. This book may be one that is too difficult for the child to read alone and is for the parent or carer to share with the child, enjoy and discuss.

Fluent Readers

Children take home two reading books each week:

• A book that is closely matched to their current independent reading level;
• A book they have chosen themselves from their class reading corner to share with an adult and read for pleasure. This book may be one that is too difficult for the child to read alone and is for the parent

These books are changed when the child finishes the book and this is monitored by the class teacher.

Celebrating Our Children’s Success as Readers

We believe that it is important to celebrate our children’s successes as readers at home and, through our home reading rewards system children’s efforts are recognised and celebrated. Each child has the opportunity to collect stickers on a bookmark in school for the books they read at home and earn certificates and book tokens to celebrate their achievements.