READING
Reading Overview
At Hawkedon we give prominence to reading as a key life skill and as such, provide a language rich environment and learning experiences which will result in the children becoming fluent, independent readers.
We provide an environment which promotes the love of reading by putting books at the heart of our curriculum: quality texts across the full range of subjects which inspire, recommendations which encourage a deeper reading journey and opportunities such as Shakespeare for Schools festivals which provoke a desire to read beyond the classroom. By setting designated time aside for children to read independently, read aloud and be read to, we demonstrate the value we place on reading for pleasure.
We use the synthetics phonics programme, Read Write Inc: a systematic method of daily teaching of phonic sounds and then learning to blend these sounds to read and spell words.
The children are arranged in homogenous groups to ensure that their phonic learning is matched to their needs and as a result are able to learn to read accurately and with speed. Children learn to read books which are accurately matched to their phonic knowledge, and they take these home to practise the skills they have learnt and develop their fluency. To ensure that no child is left behind we provide 1-1 sessions with individual children to reinforce the skills taught. For children in KS2 who have not yet attained accuracy and fluency in their reading, systematic phonic teaching is continued following the Read Write Inc strategy until this is achieved. For children in Years 5/6 a Read Write Inc programme called ‘Fresh Start’ is used to enable those children who need extra support to make the accelerated progress needed to ensure that they are competent readers before moving on to secondary school. Teachers at all stages continuously assess pupils’ learning to ensure that they move swiftly through the phases of reading development to become proficient readers.
Once exiting the programme (predominantly at the end of Year 1), we provide a two weekly cycle of daily guided and shared reading in which pupils experience a range of quality texts to develop their reading competency, enrich their widening vocabulary and inspire a love of reading. Effective questioning ensures a variety of responses to the text of study, developing a mastery of comprehension skills of retrieval, summarisation, inferencing and provision of evidence to support. Book studies provide opportunity for pupils to examine texts in depth, building their critical thinking skills and developing a sense of a community of readers. In Key Stage 2 the use of Accelerated Reader enables children to develop a love of reading: finding authors which they enjoy whilst challenging themselves to read demanding, high quality texts. Oracy is a key aspect of classroom practice which provides pupils with opportunities to deepen their vocabulary, understanding and discussion around texts.
