Curriculum Statement: Reading

Intent

Our intent is to instil a passion for books and love of reading for every child from the start of their journey at Gisburn with the ambition to be an outstanding reader. We aim to ensure every child is a confident decoder with a maturing understanding and passion for books by the end of KS1. We build upon this fluency by focussing upon further improving comprehension and language in KS2 through a range of collaborative and independent learning styles. We intend to develop confident readers that continue to develop a love of books which educate, challenge and enthral them throughout their time at Gisburn and beyond. 

At Gisburn we recognise that the teaching of reading in KS1 will look different in some aspects to the teaching of reading in KS2. We have used the EEF ‘Improving Literacy in KS1’ and ‘Improving Literacy in KS2’ in conjunction with early year’s research to support our approach to the teaching of reading across school. We aim to ensure our curriculum promotes ambition, consistency, progression and develops best practice across school. 

We recognise that where there is under achievement, we need to address it through ‘catch up programmes and interventions that deliver results for our children and close the achievement gap. 

Implementation 

Gisburn uses ‘Little Wandle’ as a scheme to teach phonics. Please see our Phonics and Early Reading Policy which explains how early reading is prioritised and delivered. The emphasis on decoding develops into promoting fluency in KS2. Any child not yet passing the PSC (Phonics Screening Check) continues to receive phonics teaching based upon the Little Wandle Scheme. 

Whole Class Reading (WCR)

In our Owls, Eagles and Doves classes (Year 2-6)  whole class guided reading sessions occurs daily for around 25 to 30 minutes. We use the reading content domains, VIPERS and Fred’s Teaching Reading to teach guided reading across both Key stages.

During our guided reading sessions, we ensure that the children are exposed to a core set of rich literature from classic to contemporary, fiction, non-fiction and poetry.  Our reading spine is designed to  ensure skills coverage, build knowledge, vocabulary development and progression of skills. As stated in intent, our aim is to ensure all our children are able to read texts which educate, challenge and enthral.  This is alongside non-fiction and poetry to ensure the curriculum builds upon the text types visited each year. Other texts are also included which support our wider curriculum to ensure our children encounter texts which promote diversity and deepen knowledge.

Developing children’s fluency is at the heart of our reading sessions.

The structure of our WCR lessons includes:

• Vocabulary Corner
• Teacher reads aloud modelling fluency
• Strategies used to develop children’s fluency include; recipricol reading, choral and echo reading, paired reading.
• Rapid retrieval – Thrive with 5/Succeed with 6/ Soar with 7
• Time to talk/oral discussion
• Flying solo/independent thinking

The school boasts a host of reading rich environments throughout our corridors and in every classroom with different themes - a Starbooks Café, a magical Harry Potter themed book corner and a jungle inspired book nook!  Books are displayed in interesting and exciting ways with a variety of texts including fiction, non-fiction and poetry,  that reflect the different interests and abilities within the class and current topics. The books are updated regularly in order to keep the element of excitement, particularly in key stage 2 where pupils can easily become disinterested and motivation to read books becomes more difficult to attain.

Children are immersed in both quality core and supplementary texts to enhance the teaching of English. These text are carefully mapped out to ensure children have opportunities to learn using a range or genres.

Books across the school are regularly audited in terms of appropriateness and assessed as to their popularity and, whenever possible through fund raising and book fairs, new books are added to the school library and classrooms.

All texts are chosen to enthuse our children and build confidence with reading and text types and intend to ensure children enjoy reading. However, we also implement a range of strategies and events alongside class whole class teaching.

These include: 

• Class stories - story time is built into classes every day 
• Library - all classes have access to the library
• Independent reading time
• Class Reading Areas- recommended reads and book displays are updated regularly to promote reading across the school 
• Author Visits 
• Book day events 
• Enrichment days
• The Reading Ambassadors run a book club for keen readers to encourage regular reading for pleasure and the school library is open lunchtime to enable pupils to access books freely in their own time.

Professional Development

Regular reading CPD staff meetings are scheduled. Academic research is regularly distributed.

Impact 

Parent Involvement

Recommended Reads for each year group are displayed on our school website to encourage children and parents to read a range of quality texts.

We regularly educate parents to help support reading at home with their child for both reading development and pleasure through our phonics and early reading parent workshops, themed stay and reads that are timetabled throughout the year such as the cosy Christmas event, World Book Day and Booknic.

Homework

English homework will consist of online Spellings Shed assignments, reading the Little Wandle or Collins Big Cat banded book at least 3 times a week and weekly phonics sheets where appropriate. English homework reinforce learning that takes place in class that week to allow the children opportunity to extend and embed their learning.

Assessment

Reading comprehension is assessed three times a year using the NTS year group Reading Assessments. SAT tests allow school to judge progress and attainment against national benchmarks in years 2 and 6. In addition, we use Collins - Assess Fluency to monitor and track children’s reading speed, accuracy and comprehension.

Phonics is assessed every six weeks. Progress is tracked using the Little Wandle Phonics tracker and books are carefully selected to match the children’s developing phonics knowledge. Pupils’ progress and achievement in English are assessed and tracked on a termly basis through assessment data, which is entered onto our school tracking system. Data is then analysed by the Headteacher and English Lead.  Regular pupil progress meetings are held throughout the year to discuss any children who are not achieving their potential in reading and writing, and immediate support is put in place through intervention programmes etc.

The intervention programmes that may run include:

•             Additional blending practice

•             Keep up phonics

•             Rapid catch up phonics

•             Key stage 1 and 2 booster

At Gisburn, we believe in the importance of quality first teaching as the key strategy for raising standards in English throughout school. Intervention programmes will only be put in place for pupils who are consistently underachieving in English. At this point, the English subject leader, in consultation with SLT, will introduce the relevant intervention programme and ensure all staff required to deliver the programme have sufficient training.

Monitoring

Monitoring of the standards of teaching and learning and progress made by the pupils in English across the school is the responsibility of the head teacher, subject leader and English governor. Monitoring will include scrutiny of books, lesson observations, pupil interviews, analysis of data, fluency assessments and staff meetings to evaluate effectiveness of policies. The results of any monitoring undertaken by the subject leader will be shared with the staff, either formally or informally, form the basis of the English action plan and be used to identify future training.