Reading

 

 

Our pupils learn to read and write effectively and quickly using the Read Write Inc. Phonics programme. We believe that reading opens the door to learning and therefore it is vital that we as educators do everything we possibly can to ensure that EVERY child will learn to read. We are determined to teach every single child to read, regardless of their background, need or abilities. SEN pupils are involved in the RWI lessons, as all pupils work in ability groups and teaching is geared to the speed of progress of each group.

 

 

• Pupils in Year R to Year 2 who are learning to read and write

• Any pupils in Years 2, 3 and 4 who need to catch up rapidly

 

 

• Decode letter-sound correspondences quickly and effortlessly, using their phonic knowledge and skills
• Read common exception words on sight
• Understand what they read
• Read aloud with fluency and expression
• Spell quickly and easily by segmenting the sounds in words
• Acquire good handwriting through our handwriting scheme Letter Join

 

In addition, we teach pupils to work effectively with a partner to explain and consolidate what they are learning. This provides the teacher with opportunities to assess learning and to pick up on difficulties, such as pupils’ poor articulation, or problems with blending or alphabetic code knowledge.

 

We group pupils homogeneously, according to their progress in reading rather than their writing. This is because it is known that pupils’ progress in writing will lag behind progress in reading, especially for those whose motor skills are less well developed.

 

In Year R we emphasise the alphabetic code. The pupils rapidly learn sounds and the letter or groups of letters they need to represent them. Simple mnemonics help them to grasp this quickly. This is especially useful for pupils at risk of making slower progress. This learning is consolidated daily. Pupils have frequent practice in reading high frequency words with irregular spellings – common exception words.

 

We make sure that pupils read books that are closely matched to their increasing knowledge of phonics and the common exception words. This is so that, early on, they experience success and gain confidence that they are readers. Re-reading and discussing these books with the teacher support their increasingly fluent decoding.

 

Alongside this, we read a wide range of stories, poetry and non-fiction to pupils; they are soon able to read these texts for themselves.

 

Embedding the alphabetic code early on means that pupils quickly learn to write simple words and sentences. We encourage them to compose each sentence aloud until they are confident to write independently. We make sure they write every day.

 

Pupils write at the level of their spelling knowledge. The quality of the vocabulary they use in their writing reflects the language they have heard in the books the teacher has read to them; they have also discussed what the words mean.

 

 

 

Once children have completed the Read Write Inc. Phonics scheme, reading is taught through Novel Study sessions and Comprehension Ninja. The teaching here focuses on the reading skills and allows children to continue to develop their fluency, expression and knowledge of books and authors. Children will continue to develop the ability to retrieve information from the text, develop key vocabulary, make inferences, predictions, sequence, explain and summarise, known as the ‘Reading VIPERS’.

 

 

 

A key element of Read Write Inc. is consistent whole-school practice, underpinned by appropriate professional development. The headteacher, all the teachers and teaching assistants are trained to teach reading. All staff have attended two-day Phonics training (July 2022) and the trainer will return to support us on subsequent development days. We will hold at least two Development Days every year to ensure we are aware of up-to-date practice. We have access to Ruth Miskin RWI Portal to enable staff to stay up to date with good practice.

 

 

Through the teaching of systematic phonics, our aim is for children to become fluent readers by the end of Key Stage 1. With decoding taught as the prime approach to reading, pupils will become familiar with this strategy and have the confidence to work out unfamiliar words in any new texts they encounter even when they have come to the end of the RWI programme. Pupils will have the opportunity to develop their fluency and comprehension as they move through the school; accessing a range of texts independently. Attainment in reading is measured using statutory assessments such as the end of EYFS, Key Stage 1 and 2 and following the outcomes in the Year 1 Phonics Screening check. Additionally, we track our own reading attainment through the use of RWI half termly and screening assessments, NFER reading papers, Accelerated Reader and ongoing teacher assessment. More importantly, we believe that reading is the key to unlock all learning and so the impact of our reading goes beyond the statutory assessments. We give all the children the opportunity to enter the amazing new worlds that a book opens up to them and share texts from a range of cultures or genres to inspire them to question or seek out more for themselves. We want reading to be the golden thread running through a child’s journey at Lanivet. When they leave us, we want pupils to possess the reading skills and love of literature which will help them to enjoy and access any aspects of learning they encounter in the future.

 

Once our children reach Key Stage Two, their reading journey continues. This is facilitated in a number of ways.

 

 

Each week at Lanivet, reading comprehension is taught through Comprehension Ninja, which is designed to be a core part of the school’s arsenal for teaching reading comprehension skills that underpin the reading domains set out by the National Curriculum. Each year group uses a book containing a number of non-fiction texts that align themselves to the primary National Curriculum. This allows us to further embed reading opportunities across the curriculum while reinforcing the retention of pupil knowledge via the eight skills found below.

 

• Labelling
• Fill in the gap
• True or false
• Sequencing
• Matching
• Multiple choice
• Find and copy
• Underline or highlight

 

High-quality retrieval skills are the foundation of reading comprehension. If pupils can effectively and efficiently locate and retrieve information, then from there, inference sequencing and explanation-type questions can be accessed.

 

Comprehension Ninja grows in difficulty via the complexity and lengths of texts. Some texts will include statutory words from the National Curriculum, plus a range of technical vocabulary related to each different subject. The length of texts that pupils are exposed to falls in line with statutory assessments at Year 2 and Year 6, growing in increments each year, thus increasing the demands on the pupil to retrieve information with accuracy and speed from larger and more complex texts.

 

 

Once the children at Lanivet have graduated from the RWI scheme, they are able to join in with our whole class novel approach to reading. Each class has access to engaging and appropriately levelled books that cover a wide range of genres, lead characters and themes. The books show progression throughout each year as well as across the school. For children unable to access the texts in their class, provision has been made through establishing an additional mixed-year novel study group, which uses texts suitable for the children’s ability.

 

Each class has four dedicated 30 minute novel study sessions per week. The sessions are well-structured and provide opportunities for pupils to read independently, as part of a group which is adult led and to develop comprehension skills. It also aims to foster a love of reading by exposing the children to quality texts, which are often much longer texts than they would read independently. The school supports pupils to be expert readers by developing the key skills explained within the VIPERS acronym:

 

Vocabulary

Infer

Predict

Explain

Retrieve

Sequence or summarise

 

VIPERS is an acronym to aid the recall of the six reading domains as part of the UK’s reading curriculum. They are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts. The six domains focus on the comprehension aspect of reading and not the mechanics: decoding, fluency, prosody etc. As such, VIPERS is not a reading scheme but rather a method of ensuring that our teachers ask, and students are familiar with, a range of questions. They allow the teacher to track the type of questions asked and the children’s responses to these which allows for targeted questioning afterwards. The answers are then recorded in the children’s books with an expectation of using full sentences and correct spelling, punctuation and grammar.

 

 

Accelerated reader is a reading programme that children start using when they have completed our Read Write Inc phonics programme. Children are assessed using an online comprehension Star Reader assessment. Following this, they are given a level which indicates which books they should be reading in order to practice their reading skills and learn new vocabulary and grammar. They quiz on every book they read and are able to use the books while quizzing. This supports their skimming and scanning techniques, which are reading strategies that utilize fast eye development and watchwords to move rapidly through content for somewhat various purposes. (Skimming is reading quickly to get an overall outline of the material. Scanning is reading quickly to discover explicit realities.)

 

Children start at the bottom of the reading range they currently have. (This is re-assessed every half term) and are able to work their way through their reading range upon gaining 100% on an end of book quiz.

 

Children read at different levels and can make progress at different rates but they are all capable of making progress using Accelerated Reader. We want children to be aware of their level and push themselves in order to move up.

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