At Minster, we believe that the ability to read is fundamental to our children succeeding; enabling them to access the next stage of their education and beyond! We believe in the importance of children developing a lifelong enjoyment of reading. We want them to 'learn to read, so that they can read to learn!'

Intent

The ability to read is a precious gift. Reading allows us to explore the unknown and is a doorway to new experiences, new adventures, new feelings and thoughts. At Minster Primary School we have a clear, consistent, whole school approach to reading. Success in reading has a direct effect upon progress in all other areas of the Curriculum and is crucial in developing children’s self-confidence and motivation.

Our children will learn to read, will enjoy a wide variety of texts and will become independent, critical, life-long readers and learners.

Our aspiration for every child is for them to be articulate, literate individuals with a strong love of reading.

Aims:

• To recognise and value the parents/carers role as prime educators in the pre-school years and work together to continue to develop the child’s reading skills, building upon the children’s prior knowledge and early literacy experience.
• To develop an interest in and a love of books, encouraging children to become attentive listeners and become confident, independent, reflective readers who read from a range of texts for a variety of purposes.
• To develop reading strategies and key skills: accuracy, fluency, understanding and response to texts (including questioning the content and ideas expressed).
• To enable children to access all areas of the curriculum.
• To begin to understand the meaning of what is read to them and what they read.
• To identify pupils who require additional support and intervene at an early stage.
• To create a positive reading culture by providing a rich language environment within the classroom and throughout the school, setting high expectations and challenging targets.
• To promote an ethos of achievement by setting high expectations and challenging targets.
• To keep abreast of current educational thinking and practice.

We aim to develop, through our teaching of reading, the following attitudes: Curiosity and interest, pleasure and sensitivity, critical appraisal, independence, confidence, perseverance, reflection, respect for other views and cultures.

Implementation

With the implementation of our Literacy curriculum, based on a study of a whole class quality text, we immerse the children in a rich reading environment, to support word recognition, comprehension and vocabulary development. We develop understanding and engagement in books through drama, book talk, oral storytelling and response activities including artwork and story mapping.

Moreover, the teaching and learning of reading will span the entire curriculum. We aim to provide a rich reading environment to develop the children’s skills in reading. Teaching strategies aim to enhance children’s motivation and involvement in reading and to develop their skills through the following:

• Reading with other children
• Reading with an adult
• Shared Reading
• Guided Reading
• Whole class Guided Reading
• Reading aloud
• Independent reading
• Reciprocal Reading

Our approach across the literacy and wider curriculum will ensure opportunities are provided for:

• Questioning, investigations, debates
• Building phonic skills
• Developing vocabulary
• Understanding of sentence structure and punctuation
• Comprehension, inference and implication
• Ability to skim
• Understanding the features of a wide range of written genres
• Story/character/plot/setting
• Idea of an audience
• Reading and interpreting dictionaries, index, glossary, contents
• Developing critical skills
• Participating in play reading

The teaching of reading at Minster Primary School:

Shared reading sessions: The teacher models the reading process to the whole class as an expert reader, providing a high level of support. Teaching objectives are pre-planned and sessions are characterised by explicit teaching of specific reading strategies, oral response and high levels of collaboration. The teacher’s role is that of the expert reader who models how the text is read. The children, the learner readers, join in where appropriate with the reading of the enlarged text – singly and/or chorally. The texts selected are rich and challenging, often being beyond the current reading ability of the majority of the class.

Guided reading sessions: The responsibility for reading shifts to the learner. The teacher structures all reading tasks with children, who are grouped by ability. Texts are carefully chosen and matched to the reading ability of the group. This enables the child to read the text with sufficient ease but with an appropriate amount of challenge. It is intended that guided reading provides a forum for children to demonstrate what they have learned about reading; the focus for the reading is concerned with reinforcing and extending strategies and demonstrate their comprehension skills covering all content domain.

• Four adult led sessions take place daily in every classroom in order to accelerate children’s reading progress.
• Whole class Guided Reading sessions take place each week from Years 3-6 in order to encourage speaking and listening, depth of understanding and an opportunity to debate views and opinions.

1:1 reading: All children in Yr F have 1:1 reading with an adult at least once a week. In KS1 an adult supports each class each day, reading with every targeted child throughout the week. Children who are not yet meeting ARE, or those with limited home support are targeted and read with daily. Every term the TA supports the child to take a Star Reader test in order to measure progress. In addition to this we use the new Salford reading test to help us track progress and support with our assessments of a pupil’s reading ability.

Phonics teaching: Our phonics programme has children in Year F being introduced to 6 sounds each week. This enables them to practise their reading skills quicker by blending more known sounds.

In Year F, phonics is taught during two 5-10 minute inputs on a daily basis. Basic sounds are taught using Monster Phonics. HFW’s are also introduced with ‘Green’ words (decodable) and ‘Red’ words (tricky). These words are set as homework for the children to practise.

In Year 1, the Monster Phonics programme is used to support children to develop a sound phonic knowledge and the confidence to achieve the statutory Year 1 Phonic Screening Check. Phonics is taught as a ten minute lesson twice a day.

In Year 2, the Monster Phonics programme is followed and from Years 3 onwards, if still necessary, the children continue to work through this and then progress onto our own phonics programme. Across these year groups’ phonics is incorporated into GPS lessons and is taught for 20 minutes each day. Children are given opportunity to practise their newly acquired knowledge and consolidate these through other reading and spelling activities that take place in Literacy lessons, guided reading and individual reading.

Across the school, for those pupils who still need support with phonics and reading, the Monster Phonic scheme, along with intervention programmes are in place and will be used.

Story time: In all year groups, there should be story time throughout the week in all classes, so that children can hear how a good reader sounds. It is a time for children to enjoy books, while providing language rich experience and opportunities to develop vocabulary and comprehension skills.

Library Use: Every child has access to the school library throughout the day and before school. Children are encouraged to find their own books, handle the books with care, talk about them to their peers and to adults, check their own books in and out on the Junior Librarian system, read quietly and understand basic rules about how to use a library. They are encouraged to request books for us to buy in order to develop their love of reading with regard to story genre or author selection. In our library, we promote and purchase all relevant, popular new releases and our children are motivated to sign up to read these texts, putting themselves on a waiting list for each forthcoming story. The excitement and anticipation this generates keeps the children eager to read and inspires them to access these books.

Impact

Through this implementation, our aim is for pupils to become fluent readers by the end of Key Stage One. This way, pupils can focus on developing their fluency and comprehension as they move through the school. Attainment in reading is measured through formative assessment carried out by class teacher each time a child is read with individually or in a group as well as the use of Accelerated Reader and Star reader tests are taken at the end of Terms 2, 4 and 6 in order to track reading growth, ZPD, oral fluency and reading level. This information is used to support teacher assessment. Salford reading tests are also used during targeted interventions to identify reading age and progress. All results are shared with all staff who work with pupils so that the level of support needed for a pupil is appropriately given.  

We use the statutory assessments at the end of Key Stage One and Two for our summative assessments. These results are measured against the reading attainment of pupils nationally. Attainment in phonics is measured by the Phonics Screening Test at the end of Year 1. Despite pupils starting Minster at below average starting points, by the time they leave us in Year 6, the vast majority of pupils achieve an expected level of reading or higher.

We firmly believe that reading is the key to all learning and so the impact of our reading curriculum goes beyond the results of the statutory assessments. By creating a reading rich environment where pupils are surrounded by books and stories in all subjects our pupils leave Minster with a well-rounded positive attitude to reading and are ready to access the wider curriculum of secondary school.

Reading Skills Development

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Reading Assessments

Data sources such as the Star Reader test, Accelerated Reader performance and summative tests all help to build a picture of a child's reading ability. However, the statements below shape a teacher's ultimate judgement on reading progress and are applied during Guided Reading sessions. Children read frequently with adults who use this information to consider where they are and how to best move forward.