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Kingswood Primary Academy

Reading

Reading at home

At Kingswood Primary Academy, we give all children the opportunity to enter the magical world of books as we promote reading for pleasure as part of our reading curriculum. Children are encouraged to develop their own love of genres and authors and to review the books they have read. This enhances a love of literature across a range of genres and styles. This will, in turn, support children to produce written work, in all areas of the curriculum.

At Kingswood, we expect our children to read at home at least 3 times a week.  Reading at home is a vital part of education as it builds a wealth of vocabulary as well as supporting retrieval and inference questioning.

Tips to support your children with reading at home:

  • Set reading time aside and ensure you have no distractions when reading.
  • Ask your child to choose a book as it will support children’s recommendations and the idea of book talk.
  • Discuss the illustrations, as this will support inference questioning.
  • Encourage your child to talk about the book.
  • Make it fun! Read in a funny voice, have a prop or show different actions.

Big Cat Collins Books

Collins Big Cat is a whole-school reading programme that provides complete support for primary reading. Children will become fluent readers through hundreds of high-quality fiction and non-fiction banded books by award winning authors and illustrators. In-depth teaching resources support you in developing and assessing key reading skills at all stages from early reading through to phonics, to guided, whole-class and independent reading for more confident readers.

 

Intent:

At Kingswood Primary Academy, we value reading as an important life skill, and we are dedicated to enable our pupils to become lifelong readers. It is our intent that we provide pupils with a high-quality education and have a holistic approach to the teaching of reading.

Our intentions are:

  • To design a curriculum that develops speech, language and vocabulary and results in the acquisition of knowledge and skills that children are able transfer in other subjects as well developing on these skills in the next academic year to help them reach and exceed their potential.
  • To build a curriculum that develops a love of reading and reading for pleasure.
  • To plan a curriculum that has reading at its core across all curriculum areas, through choosing high quality texts which we intend to develop a love of reading and allow children to recognise the pleasure they can get from reading, as well as the understanding that reading allows them to discover new knowledge, building on prior knowledge and fuelling their imagination for ideas to use in their own work.
  • To provide opportunities across all curriculum areas for the development and application of speaking, listening, reading and writing skills. The wider curriculum provides regular opportunities for pupils to use and apply the writing and spoken language skills they have acquired.
  • To use a range of sources to support the learning of reading to ensure that children are progressing and successful when learning how to read, including children who are in specific year groups but are working at a lower reading level.

 

 Implementation:

Staff plan engaging reading lessons following the EYFS, KS1 and KS2 National Curriculum and high quality texts are selected to help form the unit of work.

All children are read to by an adult so that they develop a love for reading. Books are selected by teachers to ensure that there is a link with other areas of the curriculum as this will support the language and vocabulary for the specific topic, as well as allowing the children to access quality texts to support writing genres. 

We have introduced the Big Cat Collins Reading Scheme to support the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised scheme for phonics. Collins Big Cat is a whole-school reading programme that provides complete support for primary reading. Children will become fluent readers through hundreds of high-quality fiction and non-fiction banded books by award-winning authors and illustrators. In-depth teaching resources support staff in developing and assessing key reading skills at all stages from early reading through to phonics, to guided, whole-class and independent reading for more confident readers. 

                     

All children are expected to read at home at least three times a week and take home reading books.

Guided Reading is taught daily in years 3-6, and they are planned by all teachers to teach a range of skills and techniques which enable children to comprehend the meaning of what they read and develop their understanding of different reading domains.

Around the school, you will find reading areas for the children to access, as well as outside reading areas. Subject specific books will be found in the reading areas to support vocabulary and knowledge based learning. 

A timetable is in place for all classes to visit the school library one a week. Whilst in the library, they are able to read for pleasure, ask and answer questions and listen to an adult read. 

The Academy Reading Ambassadors promote a reading culture throughout the school; they help in the library, choose and sort books, share ideas and share their favourite stories. 

 

Impact: 

The impact of the implementation will show children make good progress in Reading, allowing children to access age-related texts and develop their English knowledge and skills in all curriculum areas.

Children will progress, recall learning and develop transferrable skills. Attainment in reading is measured using the statutory assessments at the end of EYFS, KS1 and KS2, as well as this termly assessments take place as a way of monitoring children’s progress and development and identifying children who need to be further supported to keep up.

Little Wandle Resources for Parents

For more information about how to pronounce the sounds please click here. Notice how the children don’t add an ‘uh’ sound at the end, so they say: ‘t’ not ‘tuh’. Use the downloadable information to help your child remember how to write their letters and say their sounds.

Click here to watch videos and downloads that show parents how we teach your child specific aspects of phonics in class.

Click here to access resources that will help you support your child with saying their sounds and writing their letters. There are also some useful videos so you can see how they are taught at school and feel confident about supporting their reading at home.