Reading Schemes
Reading
At Deanery CE Primary School, reading is at the heart of our learning. We know that a love of reading is the biggest indicator of future academic success and believe that one of the most important gifts we can give a child is the power to read and share books. When a child learns to read, a new world opens up and children move quickly from learning to read to reading to learn.
Our approach and commitment to reading is the same across the school, we use Little Wandle as our phonics scheme and the appropriate reading books to accompany the phonics teaching.
In each year group as the age and stage of the reader changes the frequency and the way in which books are allocated differs. The following details the process for each year group.
Nursery
A sharing book will be chosen by your child each week. This is a book for you to read to your child that has been selected from the school library and will be your child’s choice. We ask parents to encourage discussion and book talk, make it fun and sound exciting by changing your voice. Talk with your child about the book, introduce new and exciting language and encourage your child to use new vocabulary. Make up some sentences together and describe things you see. The aim of the sharing book is to foster a love of books, language and story.
Reception and Year 1
Children read the Little Wandle reading books following the letters and sounds phonic phases three times a week in reading practise sessions. Children are assigned reading books that are fully decodable when they are able to recognise the phonic sounds and are able to blend the words. There is a taught structure for the reading book which includes a four part read, three times in school and then at home. Each reading session at school, has a specific focus: session 1- decoding, session 2 – prosody, session 3 - comprehension. Children are then assigned an eBook of the same title as a fourth read known as the ‘celebration read at home’. Children will be reading to at least 95% accuracy for their celebration read at home.
In addition children also choose a sharing book. This is a book for you to read to your child that has been selected from the school library and will be your child’s choice. We ask parents to encourage discussion and book talk, make it fun and sound exciting by changing your voice. Talk with your child about the book, introduce new and exciting language and encourage your child to use new vocabulary. The aim of the sharing book is to foster a love of books, language and story.
Year 2 and Year 3
Children read the Little Wandle reading books following the letters and sounds phonic phases three times a week in reading practise sessions. Children are assigned reading books that are fully decodable when they are able to recognise the phonic sounds and are able to blend the words. There is a taught structure for the reading book which includes a four part read, three times in school and then at home. Each reading session has a specific focus: session 1- decoding, session 2 – prosody, session 3 comprehension. Children are then assigned an eBook of the same title as a fourth read known as the ‘celebration read at home’. Children will be reading to at least 95% accuracy for their celebration read at home. Children’s reading fluency will be regularly assessed and, when appropriate, will progress onto the Reading Fluency programme in Year 2 or Year 3. These are longer texts with more challenging vocabulary and help to secure your child’s phonic knowledge to decode unfamiliar words. These sessions follow a similar process to the main Little Wandle Reading Programme but every session will involve some decoding, prosody and comprehension within 1 chapter of the book. These longer texts will be read over 6 sessions, so 2 school weeks, and will then also be assigned as an eBook to be shared at home.
In addition children also choose a sharing book. This is a book for you to read to, or with, your child that has been selected from the school library and will be your child’s choice. We ask parents to encourage discussion and book talk, make it fun and sound exciting by changing your voice. Talk with your child about the book, introduce new and exciting language and encourage your child to use new vocabulary. The aim of the sharing book is to foster a love of books, language and story.
Years 4, 5 and 6
Each year group has a 45 minute whole class reading lesson three times a week and study three linked texts within a week which may be linked by genre, author and theme. Each ses-sion consists of around 15 minutes of the children reading and then 30 minutes of discussion and tasks. During these sessions, we cover a breadth of texts - fiction, non-fiction, poetry, songs and picture books and focus on the VIPERS reading skills - vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval, summarising and sequencing.
All children should have the opportunity to read to the teacher across these sessions.
Children begin with a short retrieval quiz (quick start) that shouldn’t require much, if any, looking back over the text. After this, any unfamiliar or potentially limiting vocabulary is explored and read around for a few minutes. This is accompanied with pictures/visuals where possible for a deeper understanding. Deeper questions or activities are then presented one at a time. In the form of individual thinking, partnered talk and solo work.
It is important that we still hear our KS2 children read and take opportunities to discuss their texts in order to develop their higher-level reading and comprehension skills. Children in KS2 should be reading for approximately 20 minutes each night. This may be reading to an adult, with an adult or independently. We would also encourage children to discuss the book, predict future events in order to develop their skills of inference and deduction. Children should read their own reading book 3 times per week, 1 topic related text per week and 1 other text e.g. current affairs, recipe, text of parents’ choice. The topic related text and suggested current affairs text will be posted on Google Classrooms weekly.
For the majority of children in KS2 they will be on a colour band, this is matched to their ability. Each child is unique and will therefore progress through the colour bands at different rates, staff monitor children’s progress and will move them onto another colour band as and when appropriate.
Within each colour band is a wide range of texts and genres as well as a range of texts of varying difficulty. On the whole, children are given the freedom to choose books that they think they will enjoy – therefore some books may seem harder or easier than others. Teachers will keep an eye on the texts chosen to ensure that your child is being appropriately challenged. We also encourage children to bring in books, magazines, comics etc from home. Magazines and comics can often encourage reluctant readers and give children confidence to read for pleasure.
