Brookburn’s Intent:
Reading is at the heart of the school’s curriculum. At Brookburn Primary School we prioritise reading. We will provide pupils with a high-quality education in English that will teach pupils to speak, read and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others effectively. We believe that by developing children’s love of reading they can achieve that. We will inspire an appreciation of our rich and varied literary heritage and a habit of reading widely and often. Reading across all subjects within the curriculum will prepare our children for life beyond the primary classroom.
Our curriculum approach ensures that all pupils are encouraged to read widely across fiction, non-fiction and poetry to develop their own thoughts about the world in which they live. We want to establish an appreciation and love of reading and develop their comprehension skills. It is our intention to ensure that, by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read fluently, comprehend confidently and be able to discuss their thoughts on a text.
We provide a reading rich environment, where texts represent the community and world we live in. Our genres are wide ranging and quality texts from high calibre authors and the 5 plagues of reading.
The rationale behind Brookburn’s approach to teaching reading is summarised by The Scarborough Rope:
Both decoding (word reading) and comprehension (meaning) are necessary for confident, competent reading. Neither is sufficient on its own.
Our Implementation:
Teaching of reading:
As well as our phonics programme, we follow the National Curriculum.
Teaching of reading is explicit and is taught through whole class shared sessions, guided groups and through intervention for children that require additional support. Our reading curriculum teaches decoding, fluency. retrieval, inference, prediction, summarising and vocabulary and language structures, all are key reading skills.
Texts are used to stimulate and support writing. Children will be taught to decode and comprehend. They will build their knowledge of the world. Teachers and support staff hear children read. Children have feedback on what they are doing well and what they need to do better. Errors are corrected.
Guided Reading sessions take place across the school, in addition to daily phonics lessons. During these sessions reading is taught at children’s appropriate phonics level.
Our curriculum is designed so that children can decode by blending, segmenting and they are able to manipulate sounds when reading words. Our reading curriculum has clearly defined end points with reading fluency at the heart.
Keeping Up:
For children that are not reading at the age related expectation or not keeping up with their class, a suitable and relevant intervention may then be used to support the child. At Brookburn we have the following targeted reading additional support available:
- Switch On Reading
- Inference Groups
- Support through additional phonics of guided reading sessions.
- Pre-teaching before the lesson to prepare for the lesson
- One to one intervention sessions
Sometimes a diagnostic assessment in phonics or other reading assessment will identify gaps or specific needs and precision teaching may be implemented.
Other reading opportunities:
In order to develop a love of reading there are wide-ranging opportunities and provision at Brookburn
In KS1 and 2 children have a SMART (Something Magical About Reading Time) with a Reading Record in which they are encouraged to read a variety of genres from their class library.
Throughout school, each teacher reads daily to their class and in KS1 the children enjoy the surprise of regular visits from various mystery readers as well. Reading aloud and story telling models skills of what a good reader does, introducing vocabulary and reading with fluency and expression.
Each class has inviting Class Libraries/ Book areas which are well organised and appealing to encourage reading for pleasure.
Reading Buddies is a training programme for Y5 and Y6 children who then partner with a child in Y1 and Y2 reading books.
In Y6 there is a Book Club, meeting to share, discuss and borrow books. Children tweet their favourite authors, activities that promote reading beyond the classroom.
There are whole school events such as World Book Day, Book Fairs as well as visits from authors and trips to the library for example the Summer Reading Challenge, encouraging children to read more widely and more often..
Home reading:
Texts are taken home at least weekly. For children not secure on the extended code (Sounds Write phonics scheme) a decodable book as well as a familiar book are taken home to practice word reading, fluency and comprehension.
Parental Involvement:
Information is shared with parents through leaflets and workshops so that parents know and understand our approach to reading.
Impact
Children will learn in an orderly way, from simple to more advanced knowledge. Our lessons build on prior knowledge and link back and forwards to embed knowledge. Our children will be blending, segmenting and manipulating sounds quickly and accurately so they are reading and spelling with fluency. We have clear assessment points for each year group. You can find these here in the documents section at the bottom of the page.
Children at Brookburn enjoy reading. We know this because our children tell us – they talk about things that they have loved learning and compliment these discussions with facts and wider knowledge they have gained because of their own interest in researching and reading beyond the curriculum. Children will read fluently, exercise their choice as a reader, have a love for reading and be prepared for high school as a life-long reader.
The knowledge and skills the children develop, and the progress they make, is evidenced from the pupil interviews, observations and book looks carried out over the year.