Reading at St.Winifred's

Rationale

St Winifred’s RC Primary School has a clear, consistent, whole school approach to reading. We place great emphasis on teaching our children to read and have a love of reading. This is modelled by the adults in school and encouraged at home. We recognise that reading is a life skill and as such, we ensure reading opportunities are embedded throughout our curriculum Competence in reading is key to independent learning and is given the highest priority at our school, enabling the children to become enthusiastic, independent, and reflective readers. Success in reading has a direct effect upon progress in all other areas of the curriculum and is crucial to developing children’s self-confidence and motivation.

Our Approach to the Teaching of Reading

Phonics

Phonics is taught in a highly structured programme of daily lessons across EYFS/KS1.The teaching of phonics begins in Reception and we use the Oxford Owl Read Write Inc. (RWI) programme for Phonics and reading books throughout EYFS and Key Stage One. The children then move on to the Oxford Owl Reading Tree Scheme. Phonics lessons are prioritised and  taught daily in Reception, Year One and Year Two and all of our teaching staff have been trained to teach RWI competently.

Reading

Many activities take place which promote pre-reading skills. Children become aware of print in their environment and match pictures and words. The development of language comprehension is supported through rich and varied talk for a range of purposes and regular reading of high quality texts.  Initially, as children learn to read, they are given a picture book with no words with the intention that they will share the book and take part in a conversation generated by the pictures. Adults continually model story language to support the development of vocabulary. As the children's knowledge of letters and sounds develop they begin to phonetically decode words.

The first books given are fully phonetically decodable and match children's phonics stage.

Children read in school independently, 1:1 with the class teacher and teaching assistant (if they require additional practice or support) and as a shared whole class session. They listen to adults and other children read, taking part in reading with their own and sometimes other age groups during the year.

In Key Stage Two, some children who require additional support receive regular intervention using the 'Fresh Start'  RWI intervention programme.

Reading skills are developed further throughout Key Stages One and  Two in whole class lessons using the VIPERS approach as follows:

Whole Class Guided Reading/ VIPERS

Whole class reading is the method used to teach individual children to become equipped and ready to answer a variety of comprehension questions. Children are explicitly taught the skills of reading (outlined in the National Curriculum and the KS1 and KS2 test domains). As a parent or guardian, it would be also helpful for you to be aware of these, so that you too can practice these skills with your child when listening to your child read:

Key Stage 1

In Key Stage One children reading skills are taught and practised using the VIPERS during whole class reading sessions.

Key Stage 2

In Key Stage Two children reading skills are taught and practised using VIPERS during whole class reading sessions.

Reading for Pleasure

We promote a love of reading to ensure that children develop the knowledge and skills to become life–long readers. We believe this is key for children to access other areas of the curriculum with success. Our 'Reading for Pleasure' Lead and the pupil Reading Ambassadors ensure that reading for pleasure has a high profile in school.

We also promote a love of reading by holding book themed days and events both as individual classes and across the whole school eg World Book Day, Masked Reader, which engages the children with reading. All children are encouraged to participate in the summer reading challenge as well as having events throughout the year. Children are introduced to a variety of literature. Book Fairs are held to allow all children the chance to look at new books of all genres and hopefully purchase a new book of their own to take home. Our well-stocked school library promotes authors and a range of reading material to appeal to all pupils. Children's suggestions for new books are encouraged and purchased. We ensure that our books reflect our inclusive, diverse community.

In Key Stage 2, we have a home-school Reading for Pleasure scheme for children who have progressed from the reading bands. The objective of this scheme is to motivate children to read and enjoy high quality, classic children’s literature, to spark or enhance a lifelong love of reading, with all the benefits that that brings. The scheme is called Reading Explorers, to show that through reading, we can explore the past, present and future; the place we live, other places, outer space and imaginary worlds; and lives like our own and very different lives.

We have a ‘book-based’ approach to our English Curriculum. High quality, challenging, whole-class texts are used to teach the majority of the English objectives and allow children to immerse themselves in the book. The book then provides a purposeful context for high quality writing opportunities.  We encourage children to have pride in their writing across all areas of the curriculum and produce work to a high standard.

Every class has a class text which is read to the children regularly in order to enhance their exposure to high quality texts. The well stocked and recently replenished school library offers children a range of high quality books and the children themselves replenish their class library from the main library at the start of each block. Children are able to choose their own book to read for pleasure, as well as accessing a progressive reading scheme to help them with reading at home. Children need the space and time to make choices about books, and to discover authors and texts they might not get chance to look at outside of school. 

Assessment

In Reception and Year 1, the children's phonetic knowledge is assessed every six weeks by the reading lead Miss Mulligan and the Deputy headteacher Miss Dommett, to ensure consistency.  The outcomes of this half termly assessment inform future groupings and phonics teaching.

Teachers (Y1 -6) track children’s reading progress at the end of each term against the yearly objectives on our assessment tracking programme SIMS. Each pupil is either working towards, secure or exceeding their year groups expectation. A range of assessments such as RWI phonics assessment, comprehension tests and (for some children) the  Lexplore reading assessment programme are used to inform teacher assessments.

The progress and attainment of all children is then analysed by the  reading subject leader. Each class teacher will also discuss attainment of each pupil with the headteacher during termly pupil progress meetings to discuss outcomes and agree intervention. End of year levels of attainment are shared with parents in the school report.

Reading intervention programmes are used to support children identified during pupil progress meetings or following half termly phonics assessments. The intervention programmes currently used are RWI  'Fast Track Tutoring' for EYFS and KS1 children and  'Fresh Start'  and Lexplore for KS2 children.  In Key Stage Two, use is also made of the 'Inference Training' intervention programme where appropriate.

The national Phonics Screening Check is performed in June of Year 1.  The purpose of the screening check is to confirm that all children have learned phonic decoding to an age-appropriate standard. The children who did not meet the required standard for the check in Year 1 retake the phonic check in Year 2. As children enter KS2, provision is made for those children who may require further phonic support. The phonics workshop, curriculum evening and parents' evenings, give parents information about how they can support their children at home with phonics. Statutory Assessments in Reading also take place in Year 2 (now Teacher assessment) and Year 6 (KS2 SATs). The outcomes of these assessments are reported to parents