Reading

Intent

At St Dunstan’s, we believe that success in reading is the key to independent learning and a fundamental life skill.  Reading is given high priority.  Our vision is that we enable our children to become confident and proficient readers who read with high levels of enjoyment, understanding and comprehension. 

In KS2 we build on the foundations laid in phonics and early reading to further develop reading fluency and accuracy as children move through the school.  We know that understanding is rooted in secure word reading and language comprehension.  We teach specific strategies to improve a child’s understanding of a text and prioritise vocabulary development given its importance to comprehension.

Pupils are exposed to a wide range of high-quality texts to encourage a lifelong passion for reading.  We use quality picture books, novels, poems and non-fiction texts to ensure that children have the opportunity to read both for information and for pleasure.

Implementation

Guided Reading takes place in KS1 and KS2 classes using the Schofield and Sims Complete Comprehension Scheme of Work.  Sessions are delivered daily in KS2 and four times a week in KS1.  The scheme covers a variety of texts with the aim to develop children’s vocabulary, inference and deduction, prediction, explanation, retrieval, summarising and sequencing skills.  The scheme is supplemented with texts selected to extend children’s fluency and pace building upon their phonic knowledge and skills.

Pupils have a reading record and an individual scheme reading book which is linked to their current phonetical knowledge.  They are also given the opportunity to take home an additional ‘sharing’ book, which they select themselves, with the view that this can be shared with an adult at home for enjoyment.  We encourage all children to read at home and for parents to log their practise in reading records.

Our pupils are encouraged to read for pleasure and to read widely through our reading scheme and by visiting our school library.  Children also experience the pleasure of being read to.  We believe that all adults are role models who can excite, engage and inspire children to read for pleasure.  Teachers select books to read aloud to their class each day using our 100 Reads from Nursery to Y6.   This whole school document has been created by our staff and pupils and sets out the favourite core texts to share with children on their journey through school.

Impact

The impact of our reading curriculum is evaluated and evident through the following:

• High levels of engagement in reading sessions.
• Pupils are able to confidently and fluently read a text at their level with increasing independence.
• Pupils of all abilities are given the opportunities to succeed in reading lessons.
• Pupils are motivated to read for pleasure. They enjoy reading across a range of genres and having a good knowledge of different authors.
• Ongoing assessment for learning and analysis of whole class reading sessions and comprehension questions. This enables us to identify those children needing support.
• Children are also assessed using 2Eskimo, NFER tests and practise SATS papers.

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