Reading at All Saints

Reading is an essential life skill that provides access to the experiences of people from different cultures and times. Children must acquire good reading skills in order to access the information that will support their development in all curriculum areas. In addition to this, we aim to promote a life-long love of reading in all of our pupils.

Intent

Our overarching aim for reading at All Saints CE Primary School and Nursery is to promote high standards and to develop a love of literature in our pupils through widespread reading for enjoyment.

We intend that pupils will be able to:

• read easily, fluently and with good understanding

• develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information

• acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language

• appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage

How do we teach reading?

Our school identifies two important phases in reading development: learning to read and reading to learn. Teaching strategies employed by staff recognise children’s needs in each phase.

• Positive attitudes to reading are fostered through carefully designed learning activities and classroom provision. The need for children to enjoy reading and actively choose to read for different purposes informs this provision.

• Teachers use a balanced approach. Activities promote children’s abilities to decode written language at word and sentence level, and to search for meaning in the text. These activities also reflect the need for children to engage imaginatively with texts, empathise with characters and develop their specific interests in the world around them through their reading.

• A variety of teaching strategies are employed to teach reading both inside and outside the main English lesson.

• Teaching is embedded within meaningful contexts. Teachers teach children about reading by providing access to a wide range of high-quality narrative and non-narrative texts.

• Banded books are used in home-school reading and individual reading for children still mastering decoding skills. These texts are supplemented by a broader range of graded reading materials (such as those found in our reading cabin and in class choice boxes) that provide access to additional text lay-outs and styles of writing.

Phonics

Whilst some reading strategies are used more often to teach emergent reading (such as phonics), our school recognises that learners may require a blend of different strategies in order for children to progress.

• The school uses synthetic phonics to teach reading; materials from Letters & Sounds are used. Letters and Sounds is supplemented by songs and actions from Jolly Phonics and also Phonics Bug.
• These materials provide a rigorous, systematic framework in which to teach children to hear the 44 English speech sounds, blend them together into words and segment words into sounds for writing.
• Teachers follow the Letters and Sounds handbook guidance carefully to organise the teaching sessions.
• Phonics is taught in ability groups, broadly aligned to the different phases achieved by the pupils. It is planned for weekly using the Letters & Sounds lesson structure.

Coding for Reading Books

Reading books have a standard code used throughout the school. The books are graded by difficulty levels known as book bands. Each book is colour coded with a sticker at a differentiated level of ability. The chart below gives an indication of the range of book band levels at which most children will be reading as they progress through the school.

Reading Learning Journeys

In order for our children to be fully involved in their own personal learning journey, we make use of our ‘Reading Learning Journeys’ so that the children are able to look at their progress and understand that their learning is part of a bigger picture. If you would like a copy of your child’s learning journey, please contact school.

 Reading Policy