READING AT KINGSWOOD
The more you READ, the more you KNOW, the more you LEARN, the more places you’ll GO!
- Dr. Seuss
READING CURRICULUM
At Kingswood Primary School reading is everything. It is the gateway for children to access the world around them. Reading with passion, purpose and frequency is crucial in supporting well-being, curiosity and academic success. Pupils can answer their own enquiring minds across a range of subjects; through the skills of decoding, fluency and comprehension. Reading is a safe forum for each child to develop an understanding of the world around them, experiencing the values of compassion, empathy and tolerance whilst learning about and deriving pleasure from their own and other cultures.
At Kingswood Primary school, we are passionate about children’s reading. Throughout children’s time at Kingswood, we intend to inspire children to love books and to enjoy reading for pleasure. As children progress through Kingswood, we aim for them to become confident and fluent readers who enjoy and can discuss, a range of genres and texts. By the end of Year 6 we encourage children to be able to identify key aspects of a text, discuss events, clarify vocabulary, make inferences and predict what will happen in a story.
Our curriculum is planned to ensure that children have knowledge of a wide range of authors and can use reading to deepen their understanding of the world around them. We place a strong emphasis on reading for pleasure and encourage parents and carers to engage with reading at home.
Instilling a love of reading is of key importance to us; throughout the week children are encouraged to read widely and for pleasure.
DEVELOPING SKILLS IN EYFS & KS1
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Word recognition (decoding new words)
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Drawing on their knowledge of vocabulary to develop comprehension skills
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Making predictions based on what they have read
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Identifying and discussing key features of fiction and non-fiction texts such as the characters, titles and key events
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Sequencing events that take place in a text
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Making simple inference from a text
SKILLS FOCUS IN KS2
The focused reading programme enables each child to have a quality experience through the following principles:
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Promoting enjoyment
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Increasing reading stamina through increasing mileage
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Developing thinking and understanding
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Making talk central
Children learn seven key reading strategies to help them deepen their understanding of texts: predicting, inferring, asking questions, evaluating, clarifying, making connections and summarising. Children also focus on an author’s choice of vocabulary and the meaning of words in context.
READING IN KS2
In Years 3 to 6, children are taught reading in daily lessons. We have chosen to follow the Destination Reader programme which is a whole-class, pedagogical-based approach to teaching reading in KS2 through engaging and structured daily sessions.
Reading sessions support children to read fluently with greater understanding, enjoyment and purpose. Lessons include whole class teacher expert modelling prior to the children applying these skills through paired reading, independent reading and comprehension activities.
Children deepen their understanding of the age-appropriate texts they read through the systematic use of a series of strategies and language stems.
The approach encompasses the key principles of effective reading provision and fully meets the requirements of the National Curriculum. It also builds a culture of reading for pleasure and purpose. We have carefully chosen texts from a wide variety of genres and authors with the aim to engage our children in reading for enjoyment, and where possible to link with their learning in other subjects.
INTENT: READING VISION
We aim for every pupil to learn to read easily, fluently and with good understanding, and for pupils to apply these skills to developing the habit of reading widely and often, for information, and for pleasure. We promote and develop a culture of loving reading across the whole school through high quality children’s texts, high quality teaching and attractive, interactive reading environments. We plan a provision that offers pupils the best possible opportunities to achieve this through:
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Putting enjoyment at the heart of our provision through providing a wide and varied reading diet including interactive reading sessions which enthuse pupils, and the use of high quality, diverse and engaging texts for all pupils from Nursery to Year 6
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Discreet and systematic teaching of phonics, whilst pupils are at the Early Reading stage, including knowledge and skills and their application to Early Reading
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Maximising pupils’ reading mileage and increasing their reading fluency by ensuring that pupils from Years 1 to 6 read daily at a level closely matched to their ability
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Developing thinking and understanding through using specific teaching approaches and comprehension strategies
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Making talk central and using the power of peer discussion to share ideas and deepen comprehension
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The explicit teaching of vocabulary in preparation for reading - in Years 2 to 6 - which will deepen pupils’ understanding of the text, and broaden their knowledge and understanding of language
IMPLEMENTATION: WHAT DOES READING LOOK LIKE AT KINGSWOOD
WHOLE CLASS & GROUP READING LESSONS
In Reception and Year 1, children will have a reading diet of daily phonics sessions as well as planned group reading sessions on either an individual or group basis to consolidate their decoding skills and continue to apply their reading skills.
Children reading Turquoise to White banded books (Age-Related Expectation from the beginning of Year 2) have a whole class teaching input which focuses on reading for enjoyment and understanding (Destination Reader Light) and during the independent part of the reading session they read at their individual book band levels daily.
Children reading White to Grey (ARE Years 3 to 4) have whole class teaching based on developing thinking and understanding as well as enjoyment (Destination Reader) and read two days extension of the whole class text and two days at their book band level. By the time children are reading Black banded books, they can have all of the independent sessions reading a continuation of the class text as this will generally be at their individual reading level.
INTERVENTIONS
Across the school, reading interventions are in place for children who require targeted support. This can take the form of either 1:1 support or small intervention groups.
READING FOR PLEASURE
From EYFS to Year 6, children are encouraged to read for pleasure. There is a minimum of 15 minutes Reading for Pleasure time planned daily; this also includes reading aloud by the class adults. Each classroom has a book corner/dedicated class library, which is designed to engage the children with interactive, attractive, high-quality displays and resources. There is an expectation that all children read at home and the school supports parents with information to help with this. In addition, we organise whole school events to promote and embed the culture of reading, such as Literature Week, World Book Day and Book Fairs.
HOME READING
In Reception and Year 1, children will read decodable books, which will be matched to their secure Phonics level. This is an opportunity for children to develop their fluency and confidence. In addition to this, children will choose a high-quality book from the school library or their classroom reading area to develop their love of reading and have expose them to natural language books.
In Year 2 and KS2, children take home colour banded reading books, which are levelled according to their assessment outcomes.
IMPACT: EVIDENCE & ASSESSMENT
Children’s reading is formatively assessed and progress is monitored during 1:1 reading, small group reading and whole class reading lessons (DR in KS2).
Summative assessment is carried out once a term using the Early Years Statutory Framework, end of year group and Key Stage expectations. Teachers also use the Little Wandle phonics assessment tools to feed into teacher assessment.
Subject leaders and senior leaders gather evidence through learning walks, monitoring and pupil voice.
Expectations for each year group to inform progress & attainment.
OUR READING CULTURE
We place great value on reading at Kingswood and we dedicate time daily in all classes for reading. Each class from Year 1 to 6 has a daily timetabled Reading for Pleasure session, which includes regular Book Club sessions for children and teachers to discuss and share book recommendations. Children are regularly read to by adults and enjoying stories and texts encourages the children’s love of reading.
Our writing curriculum is based on high-quality texts, carefully chosen to link with learning in history and geography topics where possible. These texts provide the model and inspiration for children’s own writing- writing as readers and reading as writers.
All classrooms have well-stocked book corners, which encourage children to explore and enjoy a range of high-quality texts. This is in addition to the book banded books that our children take home to practice reading at their reading level. We encourage children and families to fill in their reading diaries daily and have made this a priority area for our home learning.
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