We believe that reading is an essential life skill and we are committed to enabling our children to become life-long readers who read fluently, accurately and with confidence. We recognise that reading in childhood enriches children’s vocabulary, wider knowledge of the world, social and emotional well-being and their imaginations. We strive to create a reading culture in which our children develop a love of reading so that they not only learn how to read but use reading to further their learning in other subjects and have a desire to read for pleasure.
We understand the importance of teaching children to read quickly through phonics and we use the Read Write Inc programme to do this in Foundation Stage and Key Stage One. At the start of the Autumn term in the Foundation Stage children begin daily phonics sessions, learning letter sounds and how these sounds are put together to form words. These daily phonics sessions take place throughout Key Stage One where the children are taught in small groups closely matched to their phonics ability. We aim for the children to become confident, fluent readers.
When children finish the Read, Write, Inc programme they begin the Accelerated Reader Programme. Children using Accelerated Reader choose their own books from a wide range, at their level. When finished, children use an iPad to take a short quiz on the book. Accelerated Reader gives both children and teachers feedback based on the quiz results, which the teacher then uses to help children set targets and direct ongoing reading practice.
We choose high quality books that engage our children and develop their awareness and understanding of diversity within our society. We provide our children with daily opportunities to read and, importantly, to be read to.
Around school and within classrooms we have developed social reading areas where the children can enjoy reading for pleasure, sharing books and reading material from a range of different genres.
