Reading
To support pupils to develop their comprehension skills once they have become fluent in reading decodable books, Hazeldown School uses the Accelerated Reader programme, accessed at home through Renaissance Home Connect.
To access your child's progress on Accelerated Reader, please click on the link below:
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Accelerated Reader - Home Connect |
Videos to help when supporting your child at home
Reading with your child at home (from Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised) |
Guide to Accelerated Reader |
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Reading at our school
Intent (The ‘why’)
"Write to be understood, speak to be heard, READ TO GROW." (Lawrence Clark Powell)
Rationale:
Through our high-quality reading education, we aim for all children to be fluent, confident readers. The ability to read is fundamental to pupils’ development as independent learners and reading is key for academic success. Reading builds self-esteem, develops vocabulary and feeds creativity and imagination. By starting the journey of building a lifelong love of reading for pleasure, we are giving children the best opportunity to be the best that they can be.
Aims:
Our reading curriculum aims to:
- Give children access to a rigorous and sequential approach which will develop their fluency, confidence, and enjoyment in reading.
- Track all pupils’ progress and quickly and effectively address gaps for pupils to ensure they make accelerated progress. This will support them in making sufficient progress to meet or exceed age-related expectations.
- Have reading books that connect closely to phonic knowledge that the pupils are taught when they are learning to read.
- Teach all children to read fluently, regardless of their background, needs or abilities.
- Instil a love of literature and lifelong enjoyment of reading.
- Teach pupils to use and apply their reading skills across the wider curriculum.
- Create a reading culture where children are exposed daily to a range of high-quality texts across a variety of contexts and have opportunities to browse literature, as well as structured reading activities.
- Build preferences in reading and choose to read for pleasure, recognising authors and styles they enjoy, engaging in book discussion alongside adults and peers and be able to make book recommendations.
Implementation
Curriculum organisation:
Our reading curriculum is structured to ensure full coverage of the National Curriculum.
Early Reading is taught through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. This consists of daily half an hour phonics sessions, with an additional three reading sessions per week for 30 minutes each. This ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.
In KS2, reading is taught for 30 minutes daily. Each class follows the same structure of one whole-class session followed by four further ‘carousel’ sessions; these include a teacher-led group, a follow-up task, ‘Book Buzz’ reading time and independent reading/quizzing time. The key skills to become a fluent and confident reader (decoding, prediction, inference, clarifying, summarising) are all taught through our reading sessions. Knowledge and skills within the subject are taught progressively and revisited over time; this revisiting of knowledge and skills leads to deeper learning. All lessons have clear learning objectives which are shared and reviewed with the pupils.
Each class is read aloud to for a minimum of 10 minutes each day. Our reading aloud spine ensures all pupils are exposed to a variety of texts covering a range of topics including Diversity, Resilience/Growth Mindset, Inspirational Females, Mental Health and Wellbeing and SEND/Inclusion. To find a list of texts for each year group over an adademic year, download the 'Reading Spines' below.