Reading

Reading Leader - Mrs E McClellan

When children have securely moved off the RWI programme, they will be benchmarked on the colour banding system from Turquoise and beyond and they will begin their comprehension lessons. Comprehension skills are taught using a mixture of ‘Cracking Comprehension’ and 'Pathways to Read'. During these lessons, children are taught how to retrieve information from the text, discuss the meaning of new vocabulary, answer inference questions, predict what will happen next and sequence events. These skills are then applied during individual reading sessions with the class teacher and teaching assistant.
In English, units of lessons are organised around motivating books and texts. The texts might be from a specific book, a play or poem, or a specific genre such as journalistic writing. A good-quality text provides opportunities for children to meet objectives drawn from across the National Curriculum for English. At Rossington St Michael’s, whole class teaching and individual reading opportunities provide opportunities for learning and reinforcing.  Whole class texts are chosen from CLPE- Centre for Literacy in Primary Education- and are recommended high quality texts that are age appropriate.
Reading fluency is something we are keen for our children to have during their reading. We teach and assess fluency as part of our ongoing assessments. If children are not fluent, interventions are put in place.
 

Research shows that reading for pleasure has a positive impact on children’s attainment in reading assessments. Children who read for pleasure have enhanced levels of text comprehension, an increased knowledge of grammar and show improvement in their writing. They also have more positive attitudes towards reading than peers. The advantages of reading for pleasure go beyond academic achievement:

‘Other benefits include an increased breadth of vocabulary, pleasure in reading in later life, a better understanding of other cultures, better general knowledge and even ‘a greater insight into human nature’.

Reading for Pleasure: A research overview, National Literacy Trust, 2006

At Rossington St Michael’s CE Primary School we promote reading for pleasure. We do this in the following ways:

Every teacher is an advocate for reading and often recommend their own favourite books to children.
Reading and books are at the centre of the curriculum.
Every half term, each class studies at least one book as part of their English Lessons. This is taken from CLPE, so is an age appropriate text that is rich in vocabulary and content.
We plan time in for all children to read independently, read aloud and be read to during the school day.
We arrange visits to the local library, where the children have the opportunity to become members.
We arrange visits from authors and poets.
We celebrate World Book Day every year with new exciting themes each year.
We pair children up with ‘buddies’ in different classes, which gives them the opportunity to read with other children and share their love of reading.
Class teachers read a ‘core text’ to their children daily. This gives children the opportunity to listen to new vocabulary and get lost in stories.
 

Parental Involvement

Involving families is an important part of our reading culture. Results of international reading studies have shown that children who are supported in their reading at home are more likely to enjoy reading and tend to achieve more highly at school. We want our children to read at home through choice. For this to happen, we engage with families to extend the culture of reading that the school has developed. Strategies include:

Parents, grandparents and adult volunteers from the local community often come in to school and listen to children read.
We offer advice and printable materials on our school website, along with input from individual class teachers on dojo and parent evenings. We hand out ‘Viper’ bookmarks to parents, which give them  a variety of questions from each content domain that they can ask their child.
Our school target is for children to read at least three times a week. If this is done, children receive dojo points. 
Parents and teachers communicate regularly in reading diaries. These reading diaries have been especially designed for our school and provide ways in which parents can support reading. 
All pupils regularly take home a RWI phonics book that is matched to their ability and a book for pleasure. When children move off the RWI programme, they are assessed using the benchmarking kit on a colour banded system.