Woodthorpe Church of England Primary School
Learning & Growing Together To Be The Best We Can Be
Reading
Curriculum Intent
Intent
At Woodthorpe we believe that creating a life-long love of reading in our children is of paramount importance. We recognise that learning to read is a crucial part of children’s skills development and one which will support all future learning. As teachers we can teach children the skills required for reading, but what we want to instill in them is a passion for reading and for them to become readers for life. Research has found that children who can read with fluency and are motivated to read for pleasure, are more likely to read for life (Skill vs Will).
It is our intention to ensure that by the end of their primary education at Woodthorpe, all pupils are able to read fluently, and with confidence. We also aim for all of our children to develop a love of reading by making reading a high priority and by selecting high quality texts with rich vocabulary to support each topic.
During their time at Woodthorpe, we want pupils to:
- Become enthusiastic and motivated readers
- Develop confidence in reading a wide variety of genres and text types
- Have the skills to decode words in order to be able to read fluently with understanding of what they have read
- Have a love of literature and an enjoyment of reading for pleasure
- Develop comprehension skills so children can retrieve, summarise, deduce and infer information from what they have read.
- Develop comprehension skills so children can retrieve, summarise, deduce and infer information from what they have read.
- Teach a curriculum, which is ambitious and designed to give all pupils, particularly disadvantaged pupils, and including pupils with SEND, the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life.
- Expose children to a vast range of texts, genres and authors so they can involve themselves in discussions about what they have read and make comparisons between texts and authors.
Reading Intent, Implementation and Impact
Curriculum Coverage
Our reading curriculum is based upon the National Curriculum which ‘provides an outline of the core knowledge around which teachers can develop exciting and stimulating lessons to promote the development of the pupils’ knowledge, understanding and skills as part of the wider school curriculum’ (2014: 6).
As a school, we ensure that our children will experience a wide range of texts that promote fluency, understanding and develop regular reading habits. In school, texts are chosen to reflect our rich literary heritage and we place an emphasis on regular reading and reading for pleasure, both in school, and at home. Through a progressive use of language rich texts, children’s ability to work with more complex language is developed. Engaging texts are key to the planning and delivery of Reading and Writing in our school.
Reading at home
We encourage parents to read with their children at home at least three times a week and pupils to change their reading books as often as possible. At Woodthorpe we also believe that bedtime stories are vitally important and encourage this as often as possible at home.
Encouraging a love of reading
To encourage your child to have a love of reading, you could:
Visit the local library
Allow children to use audio books
Use iPads/ tablets- download eBooks
Visit the news round website and let them read the most recent news
Read higher level texts aloud to your child
Websites for book recommendations:
https://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway-current-shortlist.php
https://www.scholastic.co.uk/piecorbett/resources
https://www.booktrust.org.uk/books-and-reading/our-recommendations/great-books-guide/
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Reading Books
At Woodthorpe we ensure that all children have access to phonetically decodable texts in school, which they can take home to read, until they are fluent readers. These books are mostly linked to our Read, Write, Inc phonic scheme. Once the children have completed the Read, Write, Inc books they progress to reading books from the accelerated reader scheme.
We also ensure that in class children are exposed to language-rich texts, picture books and novels to help nurture and develop vocabulary and spark an interest in reading in our daily read aloud sessions and English lessons, as we want all of our children to ‘Love to Read’.
To select high quality texts for each class we use the Pie Corbett reading spine, as well as looking at up to date national reading award winners.
In each Year group we have a core book list to link to our topics. Click on the link below to see what these are.
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Woodthorpe Reading skills
Sometimes a child can be an excellent reader, but not necessarily understand everything they have read. As a school, we have identified six separate but complimentary skills for comprehension, which we use when discussing texts in school. These skills are:
- Predicting
- Visualising
- Questioning
- Making connections
- Clarifying
- Summarising
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Read aloud
Reading at our school is of the highest priority. In every classroom, every day, our children are read to by the teacher for 10, 15, 20 minutes, sometimes more. This non-negotiable isn’t necessarily followed up with any “work”, it simply allows our children to listen, enjoy and understand the magical power of a great story, poem or piece of non-fiction.
All classrooms all have books available for children to read in class, as well as to take home. Many children have also donated books for other children to borrow.
Websites
Recommended reading websites
http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en
