Reading
Intent
We strive to instill an enthusiasm for reading as ‘a child who reads will be an adult who thinks’. We believe that reading builds the foundations to a child’s education and phonics will be emphasised in the early teaching of reading when they start school. Children at St. Cecilia’s are encouraged to read widely and ambitiously from our well-stocked library and our reading areas in class. We encourage all pupils to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction for enjoyment, to develop knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading, to gain knowledge and develop their comprehension skills. By the end of their time at primary school, all children should be able to read fluently, and with confidence, in any subject in their forthcoming secondary education.
Implementation
At St. Cecilia’s, children are taught how to decode through our synthetic phonics programme ‘Read, Write, Inc.’
Carefully chosen high quality texts are used in English lessons to “hook” and engage the children in their reading and writing. To build cultural capital, we use a mixture and writers from a range of genres, ensuring our children have a rich experience of the world of literature.
Our core reading scheme, to support children in learning to read, is the Read Write Inc scheme. This scheme is fully decodable and levelled according to your child’s experience with phonics.
In EYFS children are based in ability groups after learning set 1 sounds. RWI sessions in EYFS happen daily. In the build up to the phonics screening test, children in Year 1 will continue to learn decoding through the RWI programme. Children are provided with books that match and support their phonic development and ability.
Children who do not pass the phonics screening test are further supported through phonics intervention groups in order to secure their decoding knowledge.
As well as decoding, children need to make sense of what they read in order to fully understand and enjoy texts. In EYFS, we continue the early reading approaches from home through our book circle groups. Throughout all our lessons in the curriculum, children are often presented with opportunities to read and therefore opportunities to comprehend different text types. Explicit comprehension is also taught from Year 2 upwards. Comprehension is taught in a guided reading session which happens weekly. The class is split into three groups according to ability, each working with an adult at a pace suitable for them. Children are given opportunities to discuss the text and then taught how to explicitly answer different types of comprehension questions.
Reading at home
Your child will start to bring books home when they are confident readers. Each week they will bring home a Book Bag Book linked directly to the Read Write Inc book they have shared in school. Please share the book, talk about the pictures and encourage your child to read. Please revisit this book so your child becomes really familiar with the words and in doing so their fluency will develop. If they need to sound out a word, that is fine. Please give lots of praise!
Parents can find lots more guidance and 18 lovely videos to support learning at home at Read Write Inc online.
//www.youtube.com/embed/VGsqPohuALo#t=0.5
Our library, located near Year 6, offers a wonderful space for the children to learn core library skills, we maintain a wonderful stock of books which reflect the latest trends in children’s literature along with the good traditional reads that we all know and love. Our library is online, see the link below. (Please allow time for the page to load) All of our main fiction books for years 3-6 show a book band colour on the spine, this supports the children in making an appropriate book selection. You can see our book band guide in the documents below.
Impact
When children leave St. Cecilia’s, they are competent readers who have a thirst for reading across a range of genres and have a rich knowledge of authors and key texts. We are creating lifelong readers, building deep skills where the children are ready for the opportunities in the next stages of their lives.
