Our classrooms are full of visual stimulus to help children begin to read and write. Children take part in individual and guided reading sessions, led by an adult.
These sessions inevitably focus on the decoding of the words while children are learning to read. The focus shifts towards the children’s understanding of the texts they are reading as they become fluent readers and they begin to develop the skills of inference and deduction. In guided reading sessions, children may be sharing a book, poem, newspaper article or any other text relevant to their learning.
Texts are also shared with the whole class and children are also read to by the teacher on a regular basis. This enables the children to listen and really understand the meaning of the texts. It is also an important opportunity for children to share their thoughts and ideas and to learn from one another.
Our home reading books incorporate several different schemes, such as Dandelion Readers, Oxford Reading Tree and Sounds-Write texts. Children are encouraged to read at home on a daily basis and to discuss what they are reading, ensuring that they have a very good understanding of the meaning as well as being able to decode the words.
To supplement our school reading scheme we have also subscribed to an online reading scheme called ‘Bug Club’, which our children can access at home. This scheme requires the children to read a text and then answer questions about the text. Information is stored for the teacher to track the child’s progress.
We also encourage our families to make the most of the many ‘real’ reading opportunities in the home and to understand that reading a recipe or the back of a cereal packet is as much of an opportunity to develop reading skills as reading the school reading scheme book.
Reading is also developed and encouraged through using texts in other curriculum areas. Our cross-curricular creative approach to learning means that the children will be required to read and use what they have learnt in curriculum areas such as science, history and geography.
Using tests and Teacher Assessments we track all children’s progress in reading. Children not on-track to achieve the ‘expected’ level for their age are quickly identified. These children may begin to read every day for a short time with an adult in school or they may be placed on our ‘Rapid Reading’ intervention.