Reading at St Laurence's

At St Laurence's we want every child to enjoy their experience of Reading.   We use Power of Reading texts to ensure that all of our children are exposed to a wide variety of genres, cultures and experiences. 

Our reading intent, implantation and impact is a celebration of the written word in all its forms. Reading is at the core of everything we do at St Laurence’s and reflects our whole school commitment to building vocabulary for our learners.

Intent

At St Laurence’s Primary School we encourage a love of reading from the moment our children start nursery. We believe early reading is the bedrock of a child’s gateway into a world beyond their own through the pages of a text. We want our pupils to gain a lifelong enjoyment of the written word in all its varied forms.

Our pupils can apply a working knowledge of structured synthetic phonics which enables them to decode unfamiliar words with increasing accuracy and speed. We want our pupils to not only read accurately, fluently and with understanding but go beyond this and read with expression, clarity and confidence to challenge what they have read.

English at St Laurence’s will not only occur in daily English, Reading and Spelling/Phonic lessons, but it is embedded within all our lessons and we will strive for a high level of English for all. It is fundamental our children are exposed to a variety of different text types through a range of subjects.

Our reading spine is a celebration of our collaboration with ‘Power of Reading’ and reflects our commitment to ensuring our students have strong linguistic knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. We hope all students leave with a deeper level of emotional literacy and empathy, who can read fluently with confidence.

Implementation

Early Reading and Read Write Inc.

Specifically reading in terms of Word Reading (Phonics and Decoding/Common Exception Words/Fluency) and Reading Comprehension (Understanding and correcting inaccuracies/ Comparing, contrasting and commenting/Words in Context and Authorial Choice/Inference and Prediction/Poetry and Performance and Non Fiction) are developed through a varied approach and an immersive environment.

Every child is taught a range of strategies to support their development to become a confident, committed and independent reader. We plant the seeds of early reading through segmenting, blending and story-telling which then grows across Foundation and Key Stage 1 wherein Phonics is taught on a daily basis. Children are taught using the Read, Write, Inc programme (Please see Phonics documentation)

Years 2-6

Once the children have learnt how to read, they can then learn to comprehend and understand the text they are reading. Children are encouraged to use these strategies independently to understand, enjoy and learn from a range of texts. Through this they will become fluent, expressive readers with the stamina to enjoy challenging texts.

Reading takes place daily through literacy lessons, guided read session or wider curriculum time. 'Book Talk' is widely encouraged in class across all subject areas which supports children to empathise with characters, share opinions and debate topics. Our carefully mapped bespoke teach, talk text approach ensures that key themes such as the environment, breaking stereotypes, classic narrative and transition, are woven across all year groups and this further enables us to use books as a driver for confronting and exploring key issues (see our thematic road maps).

Our Year Group Reading Spines ensure that reading is a key component within the delivery of all subjects.

In addition to this, we introduce daily reading sessions across the school. This ensures that reading is explicitly taught every day and that each group of children has time with their teacher or additional adult, at least once a week.  Vulnerable groups are highlighted and receive regular targeted interventions.

Our lowest 25% of children receive 1:1 reading for pleasure daily. Our children love this time with an adult as it enables them to read for fun a book of their choice which is ability appropriate. Resources to support and enhance these lessons are provided by the English lead, so that all staff feel proficient and skilled in delivering these sessions effectively.

We use the Power of Reading to ensure that children are able to express themselves creatively and imaginatively as they become enthusiastic and critical readers of stories, poetry and drama, as well as a range of non-fiction and media texts.  Children gain an understanding of how language works by looking at its patterns, structures and origins.

Furthermore, we have successfully implemented a guided reading system, were children access a whole class, high quality text at the end of each day. We also deliver guided reading sessions 4 x a week, were children have the opportunity to work in a focused group with the class teacher to further embed their knowledge and understanding of high-quality texts, whilst developing their understanding of vocabulary and a love of reading.

Our reading spine feeds into our wider curriculum subjects such as science, history and topic. With our whole school intent of vocabulary in mind we use a traffic light system at the start of a topic. Our teachers identify key words, which link into learning which will take place over that topic. Through rich text pupils are able to see these words in context, which gives them more power over their own language choice. This in turn is reflected upon and utilised for assessment to help teachers improve teaching and learning.

Reading is not only celebrated in classrooms at St Laurence’s around school you will find displays which celebrate authors, recommended texts and reading reward schemes.  In addition, throughout the school year the importance of reading is enhanced through World Book Day, author and poet visits, parent reading workshops and a range of trips and visits which enrich and complement children’s learning.

Impact

Our impact is clear: pupils who leave as confident readers with a love of reading.

We give our learners the tools to develop their inference and deduction skills when reading so they can be critical and make challenging book choices as they transition to high school and further life.

Through a love of reading they can experience a world beyond Kirkby and be conscious citizens filled with cultural capital links. All of this links back to our whole school intent of vocabulary celebrated with our cross curricular traffic light system. As well as celebrating faith through verses of scripture and bible stories to showcase our values and morals.

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