Reading Curriculum Statement

Acorn Reading 

Empowering Learners...Growing Minds

 

We aim to...

Empowering Learners 

• At Kidsgrove Primary School, we believe that the teaching of reading is integral to a child’s understanding and appreciation of the world around them; a platform that allows our children to see beyond what they know, share in cultural experiences, and develop the vocabulary they need to effectively express themselves.
• Ensures pupils develop a lifelong love of reading.  We want to create reading behaviours, so all pupils read frequently and widely; whilst confidently discussing what they read. We believe that reading is vital for educational success and future success in a child’s life.
• Everyone has the necessary life-long skills to ensure they can rad confidently and with a secure understanding to achieve their goals.

 

Growing Minds 

• Ensure that all children have excellent phonics knowledge as a secure base to reading.
• All children read fluently and accurately across a wide range of contexts throughout the curriculum
• Our children have extensive knowledge through having read a rich and varied range of texts.
• Our children will be using reading in all subjects across the curriculum to link and connect knowledge learnt. 

 

Implementation 

Learning to read is one of the most important things your child will ever learn. It underpins everything else, so we put as much energy as we possibly can into making sure that every single child learns to read as quickly as possible. We also want your child to develop a real love of reading and to want to read for themselves. This is why we work hard to make sure children develop a love of books as well as simply learning to read.

Highly Engaging Texts

At Kidsgrove we ensure we use high quality texts both in Reading and Writing as part of our curriculum offer.  These texts allow different genres to be explored, current global events to be discussed and develops cultural capital through inspirational key people in society. Key authors will also be covered.

Storytime

Teachers read every day with the children, so the children get to know and love all sorts of stories, poetry and information books.  This is in addition to the books that they bring home.  This helps to extend children’s vocabulary and comprehension, as well as supporting their writing. At Kidsgrove vocabulary and language development is at the heart of all we do.

• All classrooms have attractive book corners where the children can access a small group of appropriate books, both fiction and nonfiction to help embed their love of books, stories and reading.
• In nursery children learn a rhyme a week. 
• In EYFS ‘Story Time’ is 3 x per day across all areas of learning. In addition, children have flowerpot books (6 per half term) that are read repeatedly to the children so that they begin to learn stories from memory and can comprehend verbally the reading domains.
• In Key Stage 1 Storytime is 2 x per day. The flowerpot approach is 1 x per day (Same as EYFS) and the other story is related to their high-quality text.
• In Key Stage 2 Storytime is daily. This is the reading of their class novel, to ensure longer texts are read in their entirety and to support author’s craft. Flowerpot books to be shared regularly.

 

Word recognition and Vocabulary

At Kidsgrove Primary School, key vocabulary is planned for Tier 2 and 3 words in all subjects across the entire curriculum. This is to ensure pupils understand the key concepts before deepening their understanding. From Nursery to Year 6, vocabulary is present in all learning activities, and this is repeated and recapped through spaced repetition to check pupils understand and can apply this language and vocabulary to new concepts. My Turn, Your Turn is the strategy used to support teaching and learning of new vocabulary.

All Vocabulary is shared with parents and where recognition of words is key for fluency of reading, flashcards are sent home to ensure repetition and speed in learning.

Phonics 

Phonics is consistently taught at Kidsgrove Primary School. We believe in 'Getting it right from the start!' through our adopted Essential Letters and Sounds framework. 

In Nursery, Early language development and exploration of sounds is key to getting the learning behaviours for letters and sounds embedded. We explore Phase 1 phonics which encourages auditory segmenting and blending using musical instruments etc.

In Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 catch up, we have two phonics sessions a day. The first session focuses on Phonics into Reading and the second session reading into spelling. We consistently follow a four-part lesson approach to our teaching sequence and all staff are trained in phonics. Sounds are taught in progressive sequences, allowing time for application into reading and fluency checks. This ensure opportunities are evident for spacing and repeating learning to develop automaticity in reading and spelling. 

Towards the end of Year 2 and Key Stage 2 (Years 3 - 6) we also deliver phonics to all children who do not have the decoding skills or fluency expected for their age group. Training is frequent for all staff and the consistent approach to phonics is used to ensure the teaching sequence matches that of Key Stage 1. 

Reading Skills (Domains of the National Curriculum)

At Kidsgrove Primary School we timetable focused reading skill lessons daily from Reception to Year 6. We use VIPERS as the approach to teach the reading domains (Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explain, Retrieve and Summarise).

In Reception, Year 1 and the start of Year 2 reading skills are taught through the Phonics into Reading and Reading into Spelling lessons. This allows pupils to access well matched books to the current phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (letters) being taught. At the beginning of the week these books will be challenging but over the week they will become more fluent and verbal comprehension will be explored in line with the VIPER approach of questioning. We have clear progression of VIPER questions and skills linked to the reading domains.

 

 

In Year 2 - 6 reading skills are taught through a whole school approach. We use high quality engaging text. This offers narrative, non - fiction, animation, music, media and poetry. They are progressive and set exceptional standards for developing inspired readers in line with age related expectations. 

  Our reading is devised over the week with the following core aspects of reading.

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday
Introducing the text, reading skills focus, new vocabulary and first read. Mixed ability Reading	Paired Work Building fluency when word reading and comprehension	Introduce and Model Comprehension	Complete Comprehension Task.

 

 

Fluency Reading

Each week pupils will be heard read (1-1) by an adult at least once per week.  Identified target readers will be heard daily, as identified during navigation meetings. Reading tick logs are to be kept monitoring reading sessions / engagement.

 

Home Readers

• In Year Reception - Year 6 Your child will have a range of online reading books, accessed via Reading Buddy or Reading Plus.
• Books will practise the exact grapheme-phoneme correspondences that they have just been taught by their teacher that week and develop fluency - an easier book to encourage quick, fluent reading to allow focus on comprehension skills to build up.
• All pupils will have access to a weekly library session whereby they can choose a book of interest to take home each week, this will develop a Love for Reading.
• Pupils are expected to read at home 5 times per week.
• EYFS and KS1 – 10 mins per night
• KS2 – 20 mins per night
• Daily monitoring is to be completed by the teacher and if pupils have not read they are to complete this for 5 mins at breaktime ensuring that they do not fall behind with their reading speed, fluency, comprehension and progress.
• Reading tick logs are to be kept monitoring reading sessions / engagement.  If consistent non-reading is evidenced parents are to be consulted.
• In Nursery the pupils will have

Autumn

• Book 1 - A book to share and enjoy reading - talking about what they listen too.

Spring Term

• Book 1- (As above)
• Book 2 - Picture book / card - to talk about what they can see with learning activities - building language composition.

Summer 2

• Book 1/2 - (As above)
• Book 3 - Books matched to sounds they are learning (if children are ready)
•  

Reading for Pleasure

‘Reading for pleasure is the single most important indicator of a child’s success.’ (OECD 2002)

‘The will influences the skill and vice versa.’ (OECD 2010)

• We value reading for pleasure highly and work hard as a school to grow our Reading for Pleasure pedagogy.
• We read to children every day. We choose these books carefully as we want children to experience a wide range of books, including books that reflect the children at Kidsgrove and our local community as well as books that open windows into other worlds and cultures.
•  We have a Story Time/ Poetry Time Assembly During this we celebrate authors and share new stories and poems in fun ways.
• Every classroom has an inviting book corner that encourages a love for reading. We curate these books and talk about them to entice children to read a wide range of books.
• In Nursery/Reception, children have access to the reading corner every day in their free flow time and the books are continually refreshed.
• Each class visits the local library every half term.
• The school library is made available for classes. Children across the school have regular opportunities to engage with a wide range of Reading for Pleasure events (book fairs, author visits and workshops, national events etc).

 

Impact

Assessment

Formative assessment takes place daily and helps teachers decide on what should be done next with pupils, how to adjust planning accordingly to meet the needs of the class and ensure progress.  These assessments allow teachers to understand how to support and extend children appropriately. These assessments are recorded on formative assessment sheets and used as an integral part of the lesson to set targets, identify gaps in learning and celebrate achievements.

There is a difference between performance and learning. Teachers understand that pupil performance in the current lesson does not necessarily translate into the type of learning that will be evident tomorrow.  As a result, the use of low stakes tests enables teachers to regularly assess what learning has been retained by pupils over longer periods of time. This also provides pupils with the regular opportunity of retrieving information from memory, which consequently facilitates learning. These include:

• Assessment for learning
• Pupil voice
• Starter activities 
• Quizzes, multiple choice and start/ end of unit questions 
• Standards of learning in books

Summative assessment takes place at the end of each term.  At the three assessment points, pupils also sit a standardised test so that gaps can be analysed. Children’s progress and attainment is discussed with senior leaders in pupil progress meetings. 

At the end of Key Stage 1 and 2 pupils carry out statutory assessments in Reading indicating individual progress.

In the Foundation Stage assessment is recorded in each child’s Assessment Profile.    

 

Monitoring  

The Reading Lead and Senior Leadership team are responsible for the monitoring of reading and the standards achieved by pupils. Monitoring takes the form of:

• Lesson observations 
• Resource scrutiny 
• Book scans
• Data analysis
• Discussion with pupils and class teachers

As an academy trust we are fortunate to be able to call on the support of other English leads and specialist teachers. Through moderation of planning, lessons and books, we can be sure that progress is made across all year groups. If progress is not being made, support is immediate, and steps are provided to ensure all pupils achieve and make progress.

 

 

Reading Progression