How is reading taught at Outwoods Primary School?
At Outwoods Primary school, we want to foster a lifelong love of reading, where children choose to read and share their pleasure of reading with others. We believe that reading is the most important factor to enable children to access all other areas of learning and that every child can be a reader.
We are very passionate about ensuring the children experience high quality texts in all curriculum areas. Within our reading sessions as well as other areas of the curriculum staff model high expectations of discussion, an enjoyment and pleasure in reading and a desire to learn and experiment with new and unfamiliar vocabulary. We want our children to read broadly and engage in conversations about the books they have read, make recommendations and share their love of reading.
Reading is the heart of our curriculum and we are dedicated to ensuring all learners leave our school with the necessary English skills needed to function effectively at secondary school.
Specific Aims:
Children should:
- Develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information;
- Have a wide range of opportunities to develop vocabulary, being taught this in both reading sessions and across the wider school day;
- Be able to read aloud fluently, with confidence and expression;
- Be able to listen and respond to texts being read aloud;
- Be able to extract meaning from a text;
- Develop the skills required for the critical reading of texts;
- Be taught strategies for reading including:
-Phonics (sounding out letters in a word and blending together) and visual (whole word recognition of words that cannot be sounded out).
- Contextual (the use of picture and prior knowledge and understanding of the world).
-Grammatical – pupils taught the understanding of language (morphology and syntax).
- Have access to a wide range of texts and learn to appreciate our rich and varied cultural heritage;
- Gain awareness of the close links between reading and writing activities.
Our Approach to Teaching Reading
Reading is seen as a clear priority on class timetables and the teaching of reading at Outwoods Primary is made up of the following elements:
- Daily phonic lessons (20-25 mins) within EYFS and KS1 for all children.
- Daily Whole Class Reading is taught 5 x week for 30 mins. DERIC (decode, explain, retrieve, infer and choice ) reading skills are taught in lessons. Children are given the opportunity to talk about and discuss a range of texts through techniques such as book talk. The process of reading is modelled accurately with the forming of question and responses woven through to encourage personal responses to the texts experienced.
- Daily story time sessions - sharing a book/poem with the class. Teachers demonstrate reading (a chance for the teacher to model fluency and the process of making inferences when reading to pupils) and time is given for children to enjoy listening and engaging with a text.
- Selected high quality texts are chosen for each year group (book spine). They are rich and varied to promote a wide range of vocabulary and to develop children culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. These texts are used for Whole Class Reading, English lessons, other curriculum areas and for story time sessions.
- Time is given for children to read independently in the class environment. This gives pupils chance to increase their fluency and promote a love of reading.
- Modelled and shared reading within the English curriculum and across the wider curriculum.
- Children read every day and are encouraged to become independent readers as they move through school.
- Teachers extending pupils vocabulary across all subjects.
- Classrooms show reading as a clear priority. Pupils have access to high quality texts and they can take books to share at home.
- Reading practise is expected at home.
- Every child has regular opportunities to read 1:1 with an adult. Pupils gain encouragement, praise and small targets to help improve their reading.
- School library is available for pupils to enjoy time reading and pupils are allowed to borrow high quality books.
- Authors are invited into school to encourage a love of reading.
- Stories are shared in assemblies.
‘There’s so much more to a book than just the reading.’ Maurice Sendak
Our reading schemes in EYFS and KS1:
- Oxford Reading Tree – Floppy phonics, Traditional tales, Story Sparks, In Fact, explore with Biff, Chip and Kipper, Songbirds
- Collins Big Cat Letters and Sounds
- Reading Planet Rocket Phonics -Rising Star
Our reading schemes in Key Stage 2:
- Oxford Project X
- Collins Big Cat
- Oxford Treetop Infact
- Origins Chucklers
- Story Sparks
- Engage Literacy
- All Stars
- Time Chronicles
- and of course 'real books'