Reading
At Palfrey Infant School we believe that every child should have the right to a curriculum that champions excellence; supporting pupils in achieving to the very best of their abilities.
Intent
At Palfrey our children will be exposed to an extensive range of high quality age-related texts, fiction and non-fiction, both in well-stocked reading areas and Reading schemes that will encourage children to select books that are appropriate for their developmental needs and cover a range of interests. Children will read not just with fluency and understanding but with enjoyment and confidence. Reading skills enable children to comprehend and engage fully across the curriculum. We value reading as a key life skill and we are dedicated to enable our pupils to become life-long readers, an essential skill for participating fully as a member of society. Reading also enables pupils both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know.’ (DFE, 2014). We want pupils to develop a good knowledge of a range of authors, understand genres and their purpose and appreciate the world in which they live through the knowledge they gain from texts. Children’s reading attainment will be assessed to identify and close gaps quickly and effectively. The quality of texts and teacher modelling will support pupils in developing their language and vocabulary across the curriculum. Children are given the opportunities to take part in shared reading, group reading, 1:1 reading and independent reading. Our Reading Curriculum is progressive in that it builds on the children’s prior knowledge of the assessment focuses. Using these, children’s reading skills will continue to be developed, consolidated and applied to a range of age appropriate texts.
Implementation
At Palfrey, decoding, blending and comprehension skills are taught in line with the reading practice guidance provided by our phonics scheme, RWI. We ensure children access decodable books. Through these schemes, children are provided with materials which are closely matched to their phonic knowledge. Every teacher in our school has been trained to teach reading, so we have the same expectations of progress. We all use the same language, routines and resources to teach children to read so that we lower children’s cognitive load. Lesson templates and How to videos ensure teachers all have a consistent approach and structure for each lesson. The Reading Leader meets with teachers to discuss reading progress, using the summative data to identify children who need additional support and gaps in learning.
Foundations for phonics in Nursery
- We provide a balance of child-led and adult-led experiences for all children that meet the curriculum expectations for ‘Communication and language’ and ‘Literacy’. These include:
- sharing high-quality stories and poems
- learning a range of nursery rhymes and action rhymes
- activities that develop focused listening and attention, including oral blending
- attention to high-quality language.
- We begin to follow the RWI scheme during the Summer term ensuring Nursery children are well prepared to begin learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending in Reception.
Daily phonics lessons in Reception
- We teach phonics for 45 minutes a day. In Reception, we build from 10-minute lessons, with additional daily oral blending games, to the full-length lesson as quickly as possible. Each week, a whole lesson is dedicated to reviewing recent teaching to help children become fluent readers.
- Children make a strong start in Reception: teaching begins the very first day all children attend school (after short, staggered start)
- Children who are not yet decoding have daily additional blending practice in small groups, so that they quickly learn to blend and can begin to read books.
Daily phonics lessons in Year 1 and Year 2
- We teach phonics for 1 hour a day, Following the RWI scheme.
- Any child who needs additional practice has daily one to one tutoring, taught by a fully trained adult. These children urgently need to catch up, so the gap between themselves and their peers does not widen. Assessments identify the gaps in their phonics knowledge. One to one tutoring session's match the structure of RWI teaching, and uses the same procedures, resources and mantras, so that every child secures their learning.
Home reading
- The RWI decodable reading book they have been reading that week is taken home to ensure success is shared with the family.
- Reading for pleasure books also go home for parents to share and read to children.
- We use the Ruth Miskin School portal resources to engage our families and share information about phonics, the benefits of sharing books, how children learn to blend and other aspects of our provision, both online and through workshops. Ensuring consistency and pace of progress
Ensuring reading for pleasure
‘Reading for pleasure is the single most important indicator of a child’s success.’ (OECD 2002) 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 Palfrey Infant and our local community as well as books that open windows into other worlds and cultures.
- Every classroom has a 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 continuous provision time and the books are continually refreshed.
- Children from Reception onwards have a home reading record. The parent/carer records comments to share with the adults in school.
- The school library is made available for all classes to use at protected times.
- Six pupils are chosen as Reading Ambassadors each year. They promote reading in different ways, including reading to younger pupils.
Assessment
Assessment is used to monitor progress and to identify any child needing additional support as soon as they need it.
Assessment for learning is used:
- daily within class to identify children needing keep-up support
- weekly in the Review lesson to assess gaps, address these immediately and secure fluency of GPCs, words and spellings.
Summative assessment is used:
- at the end of each half term to assess progress, to identify gaps in learning that need to be addressed, to identify any children needing additional support and to plan the Keep-up support that they need.
- by SLT and scrutinised in line with Pupil Progress meeting discussions.
Statutory assessment
- Children in Year 1 sit the Phonics screening check. Any child not passing the check re-sits it in Year 2.
Impact
Reading skills based sessions will be evident across the school with opportunities for reading domains to be explicitly taught and in depth discussions about the texts read held, including the use and definitions of new vocabulary in context. Children will have high quality discussions about the language used and a multitude of different domains being explored depending on the needs of the children in each class.
When our children leave Palfrey, a good learner in Reading will...
Have a love for reading.
Be exposed to and enjoy reading a range of texts.
Be able to read and discuss an increasingly wide range of fiction, poetry, plays, non-fiction and reference books or textbooks.
Make comparisons within and across books.
Discuss and evaluate how authors use language, considering the impact on the reader.
Be able to write for a range of audiences and purposes using accurate grammatical features and a wide range of ambitious and effective vocabulary which draws on what they have read as models