Reading
At Gainsborough Primary and Nursery Academy, English, and our teaching of it, is at the heart of our curriculum. Our curriculum is designed with the intent that all children, regardless of backgrounds, will become fluent readers with a love of reading and technically skilled, creative writers. The bespoke, culturally rich, spiral curriculum that we have developed will instil in all children a love of reading and writing that will hopefully last them a lifetime. Through our use of high quality, cross curricular texts and vocabulary rich environments, our children are exposed to a language heavy, creative English curriculum.
The National Curriculum forms the foundation of our curriculum here at Gainsborough, but we ensure that our children gain additional skills, knowledge and understanding by enhancing our curriculum, when necessary, to ensure that they know more, remember more and understand more. We encourage all children, through the curriculum we have developed, to be motivated, reflective and resilient learners.
t Gainsborough Primary and Nursery Academy we value reading as a life skill and we are dedicated to enabling our pupils to become lifelong readers; we are committed to fostering a love of reading. We strive to teach children to read effectively and quickly, using the Letters and Sounds programme which includes teaching synthetic phonics, sight vocabulary, decoding and encoding words. We believe that teaching children to read and write independently, as quickly as possible, is essential. These fundamental skills not only underpin the rest of the curriculum but also have a huge impact on children’s self-esteem and future life chances.
At Gainsborough we:
- Teach children to read with fluency and expression. Through our curriculum, children will develop their ability to comprehend and critique a variety of different texts
- Give pupils the opportunity to apply their reading skills across the curriculum
- Have a wide range of quality texts available in our library for the children to read at home and school
At Gainsborough we teach daily systematic phonics lessons, using Read, Write Inc. (RWI) in every class from Nursery through to Year 2 and into Key Stage 2 where necessary. Teachers use continuous assessment for learning to ensure the children are stretched and challenged and those children that require additional support are identified so they ‘keep up, not catch up’. Phonics is clearly linked with early reading with children receiving daily morning reading sessions as part of their RWI lessons. Across Reception and Key stage one (and into Key Stage 2 where necessary), pupils’ reading books are matched to their phonics ability; so that they experience early reading success as well as consolidating the learning that takes place within the phonics lessons.
In Key Stage 2, pupils are taught reading through daily Guided Reading sessions (Book Club) where they are experience a variety of different genres and authors, learn comprehension skills and are exposed to a rich and varied vocabulary. The VIPERS model (Vocabulary, Infer, Predict, Explain, Retrieve and Summarise) is used in these sessions.
Reading skills are also taught through lesson starters in other subjects, giving children the opportunity to develop and apply their reading skills across the curriculum.
Pupils who are experiencing difficulties in learning to read are supported through a RWI intervention which is delivered 1 to 1 by trained staff each day.
At Gainsborough, we promote the importance of reading and foster a love of reading in a variety of ways:
- Reading reward schemes are in place with a class of the week for reading and children who have read regularly. This is celebrated in assembly with weekly raffle prizes awarded.
- Children are read to by an adult every day
- Reading is celebrated in every classroom with designated areas for reading and quality reading material that is easily accessible
- The importance of reading is enhanced through the delivery of parent workshops for reading and phonics and regular parent stay and read sessions.
- Subject specific texts which link with other areas of the curriculum and texts that can be read for pleasure books are available in each classroom.
- We make full use of the Education Library Service to further support the reading resources in school
Through the teaching Read, Write Inc. Phonics (our chosen systematic phonics scheme), our aim is for all children to become fluent and competent readers by the end of key stage one. Pupils can then focus on developing further their fluency and comprehension as they move through the school.
Although it is our aim for the % of pupils working at age related expectations at the end of each key stage to be at least in line with national averages and for there to be no significant gaps in the progress or attainment of different groups of pupils, we firmly believe that reading is the key to all learning and the impact of our reading curriculum goes far beyond assessment results. We want children to leave Gainsborough Primary and Nursery School as life-long readers who will read for pleasure and who are able to reference a wide range of different authors, from both different literary traditions and genres. We hope that as children move on from us to further their education and learning that their passion for reading travels with them and continues to grow and develop as they do.
The Reading Raffle
Each week, we hold a reading raffle here at Gainsborough. To win a ticket for the reading raffle is simple! Read at least four times at home, have your diary signed by a grown up and bring it in. Then, on Friday, you will have a ticket given to you to put into the raffle. If your name is drawn from the raffle, you get to choose a book from the prize box. Already we’ve had lots of winners!
Class of the Week for Reading
The reading ambassadors count how many tickets each class has handed in. From this, they award an EYFS/Key Stage 1 class and a Key Stage 2 class, the class of the week trophy for reading.
Visit the English area in the Kidz online zone to find links to lots of fun reading activities!
Reading is great fun! You can visit new places and meet new people without ever leaving the comfort of your cosy chair.
