Reading

At Loughborough Primary School, our goal is to nurture and inspire our children to take their place in the world as fulfilled global citizens. We believe that literacy and communication are key life skills needed for each pupil to achieve this. Through the English curriculum, we are committed to helping children develop the skills and knowledge that will enable them to communicate effectively and creatively through spoken and written language.

At Loughborough Primary School we aim for every child to be able to:

• read and write with confidence, fluency and understanding
• use core texts that stimulate discussion about the world around us and enable us to promote a love of learning through real life and engaging experiences
• have an interest in words, their meaning and developing a growing vocabulary in spoken and written forms
• understand a range of text types and genres- to be able to write in a variety of styles and forms appropriate to the situation
• be developing the power of imagination, inventiveness and critical awareness

We have built our curriculum around high quality texts and value the importance of language acquisition. Our strong focus on speech and language development allows children to access the EYFS curriculum and in turn make excellent progress towards reaching a Good Level of Development at the end of Early Years.

We place a high premium on the ability to deepen and develop a pupils’ sense of their place in the world and their understanding of social justice, in order that may develop their autonomy. We dedicate time and resource to helping pupil’s understand how literature can serve as a vehicle for social change.

In the Early Years, children are taught to read through Letters and Sounds which is a phonics resource published by the Department for Education and Skills. It aims to build children's speaking and listening skills in their own right as well as to prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills. It sets out a detailed and systematic programme for teaching phonic skills for children starting by the age of five, with the aim of them becoming fluent readers by age seven.

As outlined in the DFE Development Matters guidelines It is crucial for children to develop a life-long love of reading. Reading consists of two dimensions: language comprehension and word reading. Language comprehension is developed when adults talk with children about the world around them and the books (stories and non-fiction) they read with them, and enjoy rhymes, poems and songs together. Skilled word reading, is exposed in the Nursery and taught more thoroughly in Reception, this involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words.

Approaches to Reading- Guided and Shared Reading:

VIPERS:

Children are explicitly taught the skills of reading (outlined in the National Curriculum and the KS1 and KS2 test domains) through the use of VIPERS which were created by Rob Smith (The Literacy Shed). VIPERS is an acronym for the reading skills taught (Vocabulary, Inference, Predict, Explain, Retrieve and Sequence/ Summarise).

The Reading VIPERS is used by both KS1 and KS2 with a little adaption. The main difference being in Key Stage 1 children learn how to sequence and in Key stage 2 this is developed and children learn how to summarise.

In KS1, ‘Explain’; is not one of the content domains, rather it asks children why they have come to a certain conclusion, to explain their preferences, thoughts and opinions about a text.

In KS2, the Explain section covers the additional content domains of 2F, 2G and 2H which are not present in KS1. (See appendix)

Lessons may vary session to session/ class to class depending on the needs of the children but as a general rule time spent on each VIPER is based upon the English Reading Test Framework (2016) and the number of marks available for each content domain. This can be adapted based on the teacher’s judgement and the areas of development in each class.

Guided Reading:

20 – 30 minutes a day is allocated to Guided Reading. This may take place first thing in the morning or immediately after lunch, as determined by the Senior Leadership Team. Our core reading scheme is Big Cats Reading which is supplemented by a wide variety of other reading materials including novels, plays, poems, and non-fiction books. The carousel method of completing various reading activities is adopted by KS1 and Lower KS2 classes. Children reading skills are taught and practised using the VIPERS during these reading sessions.

Shared Reading:

This is a whole class approach to teaching reading skills. In Key Stage Two pupil’s reading skills are taught and practised using VIPERS during whole class reading sessions.  Texts are carefully selected by teachers, who then leads whole class discussions through strategic questioning to engage all ability groups. Comprehension skills are explicitly taught to the pupils in these sessions.

Reading Intervention:

Extra reading is timetabled for children who have been identified as reluctant readers or working below age related expectation levels. These extra reading sessions are 1:1 with the class Teacher, TA or reading volunteers who come to school on a weekly basis.

Independent Reading/ Table Top Books: 

At all stages, pupils are encouraged to read for enjoyment. KS2 pupils are encouraged to keep an extended chapter book that they could read at any point of the school day, in an accessible place

School Library:

Each class has regular access to the school library to read quietly, undertake research projects or to borrow books.
There is a wide range of genres and bi-lingual books available used to encourage cultural capital. Having a central library in addition to the class book corners ensures more children have access to a wider variety of texts throughout the day. Children are able to take these books home, aiding our effort to encourage children to read for pleasure.

Whole Class Reading:

Teachers are encouraged to read daily to their children. This may include a longer text in the upper classes and shorter stories in the lower classes. Provision of this activity is left to individual teachers to time –table and execute..

Pupils are regularly assessed against the National Curriculum attainment targets. This assessment informs teacher’s planning.

Assessment may be:

• Formative –observation, questioning, participation in discussion, marking of written work, self and peer assessment, shared learning intention and success criteria.

In the Early Years, observations are continuously carried out and assessed against the Early Learning Goals.

 

• Summative – Formal assessment of Reading takes place once a term and children’s progress and attainment can be tracked using the school’s internal system of assessment; SIMS.

Pupils complete activities in their guided/shared reading sessions focusing on different reading skills. The responses to these tasks are used as an assessment tool to track pupils understanding.

The Big Cat online assessment tool is used at the beginning of the term to determine the reading level of each child on the reading intervention list, highlighting areas of development, then used again in each sequential term to track progress being made.

NTS assessment tests are carried out each term to identify the children’s current level and leaders at all levels use this to carry out gap analysis tasks. From this SHINE interventions are created to target identified areas for development.

 

• The Senior Leadership Team (SLT) also conduct pupil progress meetings with class teachers termly to identify which pupils may require additional support, suitable groupings, interventions and the deployment of adult support is agreed in an effort to raise standards in Literacy.