The National Curriculum for Reading aims to ensure that all pupils:

  • Read easily, fluently and with good understanding
  • Develop the habit of  reading widely and often, for both pleasure and Information
  • Appreciate our rich and varied literacy heritage
  • Use discussion in order to learn and be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding

‘Through reading in particular, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development. Reading also enables pupils both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know’.

DFE National Curriculum 2014

Our teachers at St Francis School are passionate about reading and the teaching of the skills necessary to make the ‘World of Books’ an enjoyable place to be!

Guided Reading Lessons are taught daily in from Year 2-6. Objectives for these focused sessions are taken from the National Curriculum.

From Years 2-6 we use the Literary Leaves, which are book-based comprehension resources designed to support teachers with the teaching of reading, using whole books, rather than extracts. We teach as a whole class Guided reading sessions, where the skills of reading comprehension are taught. This allows readers to engage in texts that make increasing demands on comprehension, inference and links to other texts and authors.

Each Literary Leaf has session notes, each focussing on a particular skill or two, ensuring that children secure these. The same question stem is used several times to ensure we model how to answer this type of question, before the children have the opportunity to apply it themselves.

KS1 are encouraged to take a reading for pleasure book home weekly, as well as their RWI books, or focused reading book at their reading level. Reading Record Books provide a valuable communication between home and school as evidence of children’s reading progress and achievement. Reading books are brought to school every day from Nursery to Year 2. More able readers in Year 2 and KS2 pupils choose books from the library to read at home and they also have a Reading Journal to record their reading journey in. Parents are encouraged to write comments for children in Nursery through to Year 3. Children from year 3-6 complete their own reading journal to track their individual reading journeys, as well as collaborative tasks to engage with at home with their parents.

We as a school participate in World book day each year and have an embedded Reading for pleasure culture. We have Adult Reading Champions, who support 1:1 Reading across the school.

STAR is used for Reading assessment and progress measures, by teachers and TAs throughout the school. Moderation Sessions are held at the end of each term. Running records and 1:1 reading provide further evidence to support teacher assessment, teachers are advised to carry these out at least once a term. Teacher also use optional SATS and past papers along with Rising Stars Reading assessment to help support their teacher judgements.

A great emphasis at our school is placed on Reading and particularly the ways in which we can celebrate and share reading experiences with one another.

Reading Standards are tracked every term. Work is moderated to ensure that standards are consistently judged.

Intent

We intend that our pupils develop their skills in Language and Literacy, so they continue to improve their ability to:

  • Communicate effectively in speech so they can talk appropriately with confidence to different audiences.
  • Listen attentively with understanding.
  • Express themselves clearly in writing using appropriate spelling, punctuation and grammar.
  • Write in ways appropriate for an intended audience and/or for the intended purpose.
  • Produce well-presented work using clear, cursive handwriting and using age appropriate standards of computing.
  • Develop reading skills so that they become confident with reading and be able to use these skills to infer and deduce.
  • Develop reading skills so that they can analyse and extract meaning from increasingly challenging texts.

Implementation

PHONICS

Daily phonics sessions are taught from Nursery to Year1. For the teaching on Phonics, the Read, Write Inc scheme is used.  These sessions range from 20 minutes to 45 minutes in length, depending on Year group. The children are taught in groups, where progress is assessed every 8 weeks to ensure that the children are continually challenged and taught new sounds at their own pace. Children are given time to consolidate their knowledge of the new sounds that they have learnt. They are given time to apply this knowledge in reading activities in these sessions daily.  Year 2 teach phonics daily as part of their RWI spelling sessions.

 

READING

We teach the objectives of the National Curriculum in each year group. From Years 2-6, children have a Guided reading lesson every day using a scheme called Literary Leaves, which use high quality texts to teach Guided reading. The aim of this session is to foster a love of reading and to enable pupils to build speed, reading stamina and to practise learnt strategies. We assess the children’s achievement termly and assess them using the STAR documents as well as end of term assessments and they are given an agreed standard. We also promote reading for pleasure and the children in KS2 choose books from the school library to take home weekly. The children in KS1 take two books home each week, one a book at their reading ability and the other book is a reading for pleasure book that they choose from the class reading areas.

We believe that reading to children regularly demonstrates positive role models, models fluency and exposes children to high quality texts. All classrooms have a reading corner stocked with age-appropriate range of books.

 

SPEAKING AND LISTENING

At St Francis a huge emphasis is placed on teaching the children to be confident when speaking to others. From Nursery, children are taught to speak in whole school assemblies and celebrations progressing to our children from Year 1 confidently leading whole school Masses. Children are encouraged to develop effective communication skills in readiness for later life. Debates, discussions, drama and role play are an integral part of the curriculum. We recognise that spoken language underpins the development of reading and writing.

 

Impact

  • It is intended that when pupils leave St Francis they will have met the attainment targets in the English programme of study.
  • Pupils will enjoy writing across a range of genres
  • Pupils of all abilities will be able to succeed in all English lessons because work will be appropriately scaffolded
  • Pupils will have a wide vocabulary that they use within their writing
  • Pupils will have a good knowledge of how to adapt their writing based on the context an audience
  • Pupils will leave primary school being able to effectively apply spelling rules and patterns they have been taught
  • Parents and carers will have a good understanding of how they can support spelling, grammar and composition and home, and contribute regularly to homework
  • The percentage of pupils working at ARE within each year group will be in line with national averages or better
  • The percentage of pupils working at Greater Depth within each year group will be in line with national averages or better
  • There will be no significant gaps in the progress of different groups of pupils (e.g. disadvantaged vs non- disadvantaged)