Reading

Intent

At Goldfield, we want our children to develop a lifelong love of language and literature. We know that future success is linked directly to a broad vocabulary, a love of reading and an ability to communicate effectively through text. Therefore, our primary aim is to ensure that children have numerous opportunities to achieve the reading and writing expectations for their age group. In addition, we want to light a spark for literature through the teaching and reading together of quality texts.

We want all our children to become confident readers; to love reading and explore all text types. Our aim is to provide all children with the skills to read independently, to decode, enjoy and understand texts at an appropriate level.

We know that story time is a vital part of this process and this is highly prized part of our school day. We want our children to have the opportunity to escape with a good book and thus set in place positive reading habits to last a life time.

Implementation

Children are taught Phonics daily. This is through a systematic synthetic programme 'Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised'. We prioritise accurate decoding and fluency and hear our children read in twice-weekly reading sessions and also encourage reading at home through strong links with parents.

We use high quality texts as a starting point for all our learning. Whole class reading has a close focus on modelled strategies, reading skills and vocabulary. We know that quality texts inspire and motivate children and we encourage exposing children to a different range of texts. Across the school we have a variety of reading books. These are modern, exciting fiction and non-fiction texts which enable teachers to teach reading skills explicitly as well as giving children strategies for understanding texts and improving comprehension skills.

We give many opportunities to relax with a book (every classroom has a well-stocked reading area). We know that good readers are good writers and our children are read to daily. We encourage them to 'magpie' words and phrases into their own writing and aim for our classrooms to be vocabulary-rich environments.

Impact

We achieve very good outcomes in Reading at the end of Key Stage One; our children make good progress during their time at Goldfield. In addition, children enjoy reading. The skills they learn support their understanding across the rest of the curriculum. Our lessons improve each child’s communication, confidence and vocabulary. We believe that this love of reading stimulates children to become lifelong avid readers. Through discussion and feedback, children talk enthusiastically about reading and understand the importance of this area of learning. They can also talk about books and authors that they have enjoyed and can make reading recommendations.

We use the Little Wandle reading scheme - https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/

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