Reading

Reading at The Links

Reading Progression

Seesaw

Aims;

for every child to be a reader
for early readers to have the skills to decode words in order to be able to read fluently
for children to understand what they have read
for children to respond with curiosity about what they and others have read
for children to become enthusiastic and motivated to read for pleasure
to develop children’s confidence in reading a wide variety of genres and text types
to develop children’s knowledge of a wide range of authors and illustrators

In EYFS the children are given opportunities to take books home to share with their parents and carers, this is a great opportunity for children to start to acquire basic book handling skills. When we feel your child is ready to read independently, we will give them their first book. This will allow children to consolidate the letters and sounds, key words and phonetically decodable words they have been learning in class. We believe that it is important that every child feels success as this helps them grow in confidence and enjoy reading, feeling a sense of achievement. This book is labelled Independent Read this is because children should be able to read the book with 95% accuracy to an adult.

Your child’s independent read book will only be changed once a week. This is to allow your child to read the book more than once. Each time please encourage your child to focus on a different target:

First Time Reading	Decoding (Bending and Segmenting unknown words)
Second Time Reading	Fluency (reading with Pace)
Third Time Reading	Expression
Fourth Time Reading	Understanding (deduction) the act of drawing logical conclusions based on the information given in a text
Fifth Time Reading	Understanding (inference) filling in what is not written on the page or working out what the author is trying to tell you using clues and evidence from the text when it is not explicitly written.

Alongside the phonics book, children will also take home a colour banded book of their choice (within the relevant band). This book will be labelled Enjoyment. This book is not specifically matched to the child’s phonic ability and therefore should be read by an adult to the child. This is an enjoyment book so we don’t want children having the pressure of trying to read any words within the book we just want them to sit back, relax and enjoy an adult reading to them.

We use Seesaw in school to record the reading that takes place at home. Parents are encouraged to make a comment about their child’s progress when reading at home on Seesaw. There are a number of ways in which parents can let us know how the reading at home is going:

Comment in your child’s journal to say when your child has read, what pages they have read and maybe how they managed with the book.
Take a photo of the page you child has read up to and make a comment about how they managed with the reading.
Video your child reading their book so the teacher can see how well they are doing.

See attached link to a video on our YouTube Channel, created by our children, to give you step by step instructions on how to use Seesaw to record your child’s reading.

Recording home reading – YouTube

In KS1 we aim to develop the skills already acquired by the children and allow them to progress. We use a range of books which continue to support and consolidate the learning taking place in class. We spend quality time developing key reading skills. Some books are kept in classrooms and some are centrally stored.

The phonics books we send home are from Phonics Bug books published by Pearson.

Our colour banded books include texts form the following publishers:

Oxford Reading Tree
Flying Boot
Bug Club
Phonics Bug
Story Street
Floppy’s phonics
Oxford Literacy Web

At Key Stage 2 children are making the transition from scheme and very structured books to ‘real books.’ They still have access to colour banded books which the children are supported to work through. Children are encouraged to keep a record of what they read on Seesaw. Using Seesaw provides is a useful communication device between home and school. It allows positive comments to be made by children, parents and teachers when appropriate. All teachers keep a record of the books the children are reading and track the progress they are making.

We use a range of reading schemes with KS2 children, these include:

Oxford Reading TreeTops
Oxford Reading Tree Classics
Ginn pockets facts
Bug Club

In addition to this all pupils have access to a comprehensive collection of reading material (including fiction, non-fiction, picture books, poetry, plays, traditional and modern texts, reference books, information from the internet and texts they have created themselves. Each class has a specific reading area, which encourages the children to go and read different books.

Guided Reading

Each reading practice session has a clear focus, so that the demands of the session do not overload the children’s working memory. The reading practice sessions have been designed to focus on key reading skills:

Monday: Decoding & Prediction

Tuesday and Wednesday: Fluency/Prosody – Vocabulary

Thursday and Friday: Comprehension – Retrieve, Inference, Explain

In Reception these sessions start in Spring 1 and are covered over a 2-week period to ensure high quality first teaching for all children.

In KS1 and KS2, guided reading takes place daily for half an hour each day. To aid the teaching of guided reading, each year group has access to a range of guided reading books and text extracts. If children are still accessing phonics teaching the guided reading texts they use directly mirror the sounds they have been covering in class. Each teacher keeps a record of the children’s progress during guided reading and uses the information to update tracking information.

For children still on the phonics scheme Phonics Bug books published by Pearson are used.

Reading & Poetry Spines at The Links

We use books for lots of reasons in school and we have thought carefully about the texts we use to ensure they are high quality and reflect a wide selection of authors and genres. Some of these books we use as part of our curriculum teaching and some we use as part of our daily reading for please.

Please see below a variety of books, selected by each year group that are used to both develop our curriculum as well as those we have chosen to read for pleasure in our daily sessions.

The Links Poetry Spine

At The Links Primary School, we have developed a ‘Poetry Spine’ of core, high quality poetry for each year group from Year 1 to Year 6. Focus poetry has been carefully chosen by teachers and sits at the core of our curriculum. Poetry is taught across subjects and not just in English lessons for example some poems are explored through performance, dance, art or music, whilst others through writing or discussion.

Ensuring that children have poetry read to them on a regular basis over the years increases their familiarity with poetry’s many possibilities.