Overview of the Subject:

Our practice in the teaching of reading is defined by current national guidance on best practice, in-service training, staff discussion and professional judgement.

Our approach to teaching of reading is multi-faceted, incorporating oracy, drama, real contexts and high-quality literature. Our priority is to create fluent readers and writers with all the skills and knowledge they need to be confidently literate in life.

We want all children to leave Spire Junior School with a life-long reading habit and a love of books because reading will improve their vocabulary, inspire them creatively and improve their ability to write well. Skills needed for reading are taught within real contexts wherever possible and teachers plan creative and relevant links to their class topics as a stimulus throughout the year.

Subject Information:

Intent:

In reading, our curriculum aims to develop fluent, confident and articulate readers, who feel they can confidently approach a range of texts for their chronological age. We build upon their understanding of phonics which they have been taught throughout their education, in order to blend sounds and recognise tricky or irregular words.

We teach the children how to respond to questions about a text based on the reading domains prescribed in the National Curriculum. The children learn how to retrieve, infer, summarise, predict, interpret language, understand word meaning and draw comparisons within and across a range of texts. By providing regular practise and instruction of this, we strive for our children to be able to confidently respond to both verbal and written questions about what they read.

We intend to support all children to develop a deep-rooted love of words, text, books and language, encouraging them to explore both fiction and non-fiction writing in a range of genres and themes. To support this, we buy into the Sheffield schools library service whereby we can borrow up to 200 books per teacher, per term.

Further to this, our intent is to diversify this love of reading across all of our subjects, not just within dedicated English Reading and Writing lessons. We have developed disciplinary literacy across our curriculum, including through Science, History and Geography. This again exposes children to language, vocabulary and text structures, which will help them become successful readers and interpreters in a range of subjects.

Implementation:

We are confident our curriculum is successful in the teaching and learning of reading through a variety of monitoring and feedback activities which take place through school.

Summative data in school includes:

• Termly NFER assessments
• Past SATs papers for Year 6
• Benchmarking assessments each term for Years 3 and 4, as well as for readers in upper school who have not yet reached they age-appropriate reading band.
• Salford reading tests each term for all pupils, which provides a reading age.

Data is collected and collaborated by class teachers to highlight the children who need additional support to make the appropriate progress. These target children and the lowest-ability readers in each class (including any children with Special Educational Needs) are shared with all teaching staff in the year group and with SLT. This allows support to be implemented and monitored effectively. Our Insight Data Tracker shows that children are making progress in reading across school.

When asked about their reading lessons, children spoke positively about the texts they have read as a class, as well as the texts they had chosen themselves from the library and were reading independently. Children shared that they liked the characters, storylines and settings from their novels and could retell elements of the stories discussed.

Leaders have the opportunity to observe the teaching of reading throughout school including book scrutiny, learning walks and pupil voice. Feedback towards the English co-ordinator during performance management reviews with the headteacher have been positive in regards to the reading curriculum and development.

Through monitoring, it has been found that reading is being made accessible to all children through a variety of class inclusion as well as additional phonics support where appropriate. The money which has been spent to develop the phonics resources in school is proving to be effective through improvements in regular assessments.

Children who read regularly at home (at least three times a week) are entered into a school raffle, with the chance to win a book and a hot chocolate from our school vending machine. There has been an increased number of children entering the raffle each week this academic year, and this is widely encouraged and supported through school and by our families. Staff monitor and track who needs additional time to read to an adult in school.

Reading is a life skill which is shared outside of our reading curriculum. We have been successful in sharing our work and thoughts with authors through social media such as Twitter and received responses from celebrities and authors alike. We were also very privileged to be invited to the Annual Sheffield Book Awards, where children have the opportunity to meet a range of children’s authors. Additionally, our year celebration of World Book Day ignites conversations about books and reading throughout our whole school community.

Furthermore, our twice yearly book fairs have been successful, with the money spent by our families earning us around £300 each time for us to spend on books for our library. This in turn will further increase our reading offers and opportunities in school.

Impact:

When implementing our Reading curriculum, all children have access to quality-first teaching as standard. This is supported by additional interventions where appropriate to develop gaps in knowledge, including: gaps in phonetic understanding, delays in reading fluency or to support reading comprehension strategies. Interventions are carried out to support reading by both teachers and teaching assistants. Volunteers are also invited into school to help ensure that all children have the opportunity to read aloud to an adult each week.

Reading is taught explicitly in each class every day. This is organised so that the children will access one fiction (or two shorter fiction) books in terms 1, 3 and 5. In the alternate terms, classes are then exposed to a range of non-fiction reading and poetry. High-level texts have been chosen based on extensive research and professional recommendations, to ensure the children are exposed to a range of challenging texts. This includes texts from different cultures, eras, social perspectives and texts which promote deeper-level thinking. Recent external feedback stated ‘the work given to pupils was demanding and matched the aims of the curriculum’.

Throughout all of these genres, the reading domains are taught and built upon to develop the children’s ability to respond to questions about a text. This is to best prepare them for both summative assessments throughout their education, as well as their wider life skills. In line with statutory assessments, a greater focus is placed on those skills which are more frequently assessed, including retrieval, inference and understanding of word meaning.

What are reading lessons like?

1. At the beginning of lessons being recorded in books, children will put their date and LI using the reading domains as a basis for these.
2. A ‘6in6’ from a cold text (topic related) to be completed using skills related to the reading domains.
3. If there is an extract of text specific to the lesson or week, this will be stuck in the books to refer to.
4. Reading lessons will develop over the course of a week, mostly using the same text. All children in the class will have exposure to the text, regardless of ability. This includes struggling or SEND readers, who can listen and follow within the lesson.
5. The first reading lesson of the week will have a fluency focus, as follows:

• The teacher reads an extract of the text / the text without discussion.
• The teacher reads an extract of the text / the text and highlights and discusses key vocabulary or retrieval statements.
• All children read the text in their heads to themselves.
• Partner A reads to partner B.
• Partner B reads to Partner A.
• The children time themselves / a partner to get as close to the teacher’s score as possible.

6. The remaining lessons will be used to teach different reading domains and skills. Each session will have a different focus – eg inference or word meaning. However, there will be overlap throughout lessons which is to be expected.
7. Over the course of the week, children should be exposed to a range of written and verbal questions as well as written and verbal answering methods.

Long-term subject overview

C

What else is happening in reading?

Recently, we have had an exciting variety of reading activities at school. These include: Our school book fair, attending the children’s Book Awards in Sheffield, hosting a Zoom call with Berlie Doherty, Y3/4 library visits,  celebrating World Book Day, Elsa Emotional literacy visit to Whirlow Farm, inviting 12 school readers into school each week, a weekly visit from the literacy dog, and taking part in the Summer Reading Challenge.

Reading at home

The Reading curriculum can be supported at home by the use of Ed Shed, the children have logins in their reading records. This allows them to access their spellings and complete games relevant to their year group learning.

https://www.edshed.com/en-gb/menu

Authorfy is a brilliant resource, please see below: https://authorfy.com/masterclasses/?age=7-11&masterclass_author=&keywords= 

Google look inside – just type the name of the book in and it will bring up a preview if it is available

Derbyshire library service – physical copies, or ebook copies online. https://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/leisure/libraries/ebooks/ebooks-emagazines-and-eaudiobooks.aspx - a personal account will be needed.

Amazon ‘look inside’ – you can access the first chapter of a book usually.

The world book day website has a host of fun activities to complete Families - World Book Day

Individual author websites often have chapters you can find e.g.

Resources - Abi Elphinstone