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English: Reading
Intent
At Highfield Academy, we place reading at the heart of everything we do: it is the key to unlock the curriculum and the world we live in.
Our aims are for our pupils to:
- Develop competence in the skills of Oracy (speaking and listening), asking and responding to questions and participating in discussions
- Understand the meaning of what they read and what is read to them
- Develop a lifelong enjoyment of reading, taking pleasure from what has been read
- Appreciate and value the rich and varied literary heritage from around the world
- Read confidently and fluently and seek to acquire knowledge independently
- Develop the reading skills they need to access all areas of the curriculum.
- Read critically to ascertain what the truth is in a statement so that they may gain a balanced understanding of local, national and international issues.
Implementation: Phonics
We use Bug Club Phonics, a comprehensive teaching programme
and DFE approved systematic synthetic phonics scheme to teach phonics. The Bug Club Phonics programme follows the teaching sequence of letters and sounds and lessons are structured in the same way each day with an introduction, revisit, teach, practise and apply element to every session, providing the children with consistent routines that they can become familiar with.
Once completed and pupils pass phonics screen check at the end of year 1, they progress on to banded books.
Implementation: Guided Reading
To be able to read for understanding and enjoyment, it is essential for children to become accurate and efficient readers, for whom decoding is an automatic process. EEF research supports this and concluded that the ability to read fluently allows children to free up their attention to focus on the meaning of what they read
Daily Guided Reading lessons
Children from years 2-6 take part in daily guided reading lessons. Within these lessons, the main focus of teaching and learning is placed on the following 6 areas:
- Word meaning and vocabulary choices
- Retrieval and recording
- Sequencing
- Making inferences with justifications
- Making comparisons
- Predicting
Impact
Children become confident and fluent readers, who understand the importance of being able to read in order to learn, and who are passionate and enthusiastic about reading. They show that they are:
- Proud to be readers
- Eager to read
- Able to discuss books with each other
- Confident when reading aloud with an adult or in front of their peers
- Able to read a text and comprehend its meaning
- Able to use their reading skills to gain knowledge in all areas of the curriculum
- Aware of the different genres
- Reading for pleasure
- Developing awareness of a range of poetry
- Developing perspective of a range of authors
- Building a library of books and stories to take with them through their life
Children leave Highfield Academy at the end of Key Stage 2 with results higher than the national average. This is reflective of the quality of structured guided reading lessons and the promotion of a love for reading.
| Word meaning and vocabulary choices | Retrieval and recording | Sequencing |
| Making inferences with justifications | Making comparisons | Predicting |
