Reading
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or continue onward to learn more about our reading at Cedar Park.
Intent
At Cedar Park, our aim is to open up the whole curriculum offer by helping to nurture and produce proficient readers. We fully believe in the philosophy of ‘learn to read, read to learn’ and so it is a subject that takes great priority with leadership, staff, parents and governors.
Ultimately, we want children to be motivated readers, who are able to comprehend texts that they choose to read. In order to achieve these aims, our focus is on ensuring children are excellent word readers and are able to comprehend language at an age-appropriate standard.
Good readers will:
- Read widely
- Read at home and a school
- Make connections between thing they read and the wider world
- Read with fluency
- Ask questions about what they read
Our ambition is for all readers to be good readers.
Implementation
At Cedar Park, we teach word reading and language comprehension alongside each other.
Systematic synthetic phonics is taught from Nursery through to Year 2, using the scheme ‘Supersonic Phonic Friends’ (SPF). This scheme may continue for some children into KS2, dependant on need. SPF increases children’s phonological awareness and print knowledge, allowing them to decode and read more fluently.
Word Level teaching goes beyond EYFS and KS1 and into KS2, where spelling rules and patterns are taught.
We also have a sharp focus on language comprehension. Skills and knowledge are built on year on year, using a rich variety of texts. Some of these texts, come as part of our Read to Write scheme of work, where each class (from Year 1 to 6) will study a book per half term. Other books are carefully selected by the teaching staff in order to both develop age-appropriate language comprehension and build the children’s passion for literature.
We teach specific reading skills:
- Vocabulary development
- Inference
- Prediction
- Explanation
- Retrieval
- Sequencing
With the exception of EYFS, where there is no focus on explanation, these skills are taught throughout each child’s time at Cedar Park.
Key Stage 1
In KS1, each child will read with an adult twice per week. The first of these reads will have a focus on decoding. During the second read, the same book is read, but now the focus switches to fluency and allows more time for children to hone their language comprehension skills.
Key Stage 2
In KS2, we use a whole class reading approach, where children are exposed to challenging, engaging ang thought-provoking texts. During the year, each child will be exposed to fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Reading is taught daily, as we believe it is the key to unlocking the wider curriculum. Vocabulary is the focus every Monday, with other language comprehension skills taught throughout the week.
Impact
Significantly more children than national norms leave our school reading at age related expectations. We also have more children leave us reading at greater depth than the national average.
We assess children’s reading daily against the national curriculum requirements. This helps to build a termly teacher assessment. NFER testing is used to help come to a teacher judgement and also assists in establishing gaps in knowledge and understanding. These gaps can be tackled during intervention or short keep up sessions.
What does Reading look like at Cedar Park?
Reading is every day for every child at Cedar Park. Our implementation of the curriculum means that children are exposed to books and reading teaching daily.
On top of this, we enhance our curriculum by providing plenty of reading enrichment and opportunities to read for pleasure. Some of these opportunities included:
- A school library. Children get a weekly visit and can also choose to visit during lunchtimes if they wish.
- The Big Bed Time Read, where children come back to school in their pyjamas and listen to a plethora of stories read by adults (see videos below)
- An Extreme Reading Competition, where pupils get the chance to show off the unusual places they have been reading.
- Reading Race Tracks. These classroom displays show how much children are reading. The more you read, the better the prizes.
- Story Club, where children explore stories and books through drama, costume and props.
- The Hidden Book Swap. A day where children wrapped a book as a gift and received an unknown book from a peer.
- Book Shouts. These are weekly book recommendations by various students, placed in the school newsletter.
- Reading certificates awarded to those making great effort with their reading during the year (see below).
The school also has a ‘Love of Reading Committee’, who meet half termly. This is a group of passionate adults, ranging from teachers to the school caretaker (Mr Eales). More ideas that will help children to fall in love with reading will come from this group.
Reading at Cedar Park for children with SEND
Some children may require additional reading to that they get within class reading lessons. This is achieved through 1:1 reading sessions with a teacher. In these sessions, children are able to work on specific areas that need development. These areas are established through robust formative and summative assessment.
We understand that not all children like to read aloud in front of their peers, and we therefore use a variety of different techniques in order to progress through a text. These include, but are not confined to:
- Echo reading
- Choral reading
- Paired reading
- Teacher reading
- Silent reading
Teachers adapt learning within reading sessions by using some of the following strategies:
- Peer work
- Scaffolding answers
- Creating closed procedure tasks
- Allowing for list making whilst reading that will help when composing a response
- Pre-teaching
- Creating answer stems
- Modelling answers and responses
- Speaking about texts before writing about texts
- Providing pictures that support vocabulary
For children that find word reading challenging beyond KS1, we provided a before-school club, where the children have access to Nessy Reading. This programme is designed to create a bespoke learning journey that focuses on gaps in knowledge around decoding. This club takes place four times per week.
Useful Documents & Links