Reading
At Holgate Primary and Nursery School, we aim for every child to make progress through fostering a love of reading.
The teaching of reading throughout school falls primarily into two main areas: word reading and comprehension. Word reading is a key focus particularly in children's early schooling where there are daily phonics sessions as well specific reading sessions. Phonic sessions follow a four-part format allowing children to revisit/review previously learnt sounds/words; teach, where they learn new sounds; practise; which allows children to 'try out' the sound(s) and apply, where children use these newly taught sounds in context. KS1 provision aims to be opportunities for phonic practice and application through use of LaunchPad Reading. This ensures children are exposed to texts that practice their current phonics teaching and allows them opportunities to apply the skills learnt in discrete phonics sessions
Throughout school, comprehension is taught so that children can understand what they have read. We use RIC principles to structure our comprehension teaching (Retrieve, Interpret and Choice) which allows us to focus on author intent as well as inferring and retrieving information in order to fully cover all areas of the reading content domain. Children have the opportunity to apply their understanding in a wide range of ways including, but not limited to, using text to draw settings/characters, answering questions, matching/sequencing activities and specific vocabulary activities. Additionally, in KS2 APE (Answer, Prove, Explain) is used as both a teaching tool and a resource to support children with structuring higher-level answers.
Children are taught through a variety of whole class, small group and 1:1 reading sessions. The principles of Reciprocal Reading are applied to some reading sessions to support children’s comprehension. All children are exposed to a range of authors and text types throughout these sessions. (Refer to Our Reading Offer and Reading Spine)
Additional reading enrichment takes place throughout the school, with books shared in Talking Points (PSHRE), texts used to support Curriculum Vehicle sessions, assemblies and whole-class reads.
Our Reading Offer
We use the following agreed reading offer for children:
Reading for Pleasure
Children can enjoy reading purely for reading’s sake by:
- A class shared text daily
- Using high-quality texts
- Opportunities for quiet reading in class throughout the week
- Sharing stories written by a range of authors, supported by our use of the Reading Spine
- Use of the school library
- Visiting Hucknall Library half termly
- Sharing books with reading buddies in class and across Key Stages
Teaching of Reading
Children’s teaching of Early Reading includes the following strategies:
- Daily Monster Phonics sessions
- Catch up phonics sessions
- Whole class reading
- 1:1 reading
- Shared reading
- Sharing of quality texts
- Sharing of rhymes and traditional tales
- Vocabulary teaching
- Reading interventions
- Reciprocal reading strategies
- Speech and language interventions such as Talking Tables and language Link
- Reading across the curriculum.
- Launchpad reading
Reading is continued once children are more competent readers through:
- At least 4 whole class reading lessons a week which develop such skills as vocabulary, comprehension, inference and skimming/scanning
- 1:1 reading
- Shared reading
- Sharing of quality texts
- Reciprocal reading sessions/interventions
- Comprehension rich sessions across the curriculum
Range of Texts
Children are encouraged to explore a range of genres, authors, structures and complexity of texts by:
- Using a range of age-appropriate texts – each year group has a Reading Spine which includes poetry, classic texts, traditional tales, non-fiction and a range of fictional stories
- Being questioned in a way that will challenge the children and include a range of question types to suit the text
Year 1's Reading Spine
Year 2's Reading Spine
Year 3's Reading Spine
Year 4's Reading Spine
Year 5's Reading Spine
Year 6's Reading Spine
Shared Reading
Children have opportunities to share texts, talk about books, read to others and be read to.
Active Engagement
At times, children will have the opportunity to engage with a variety of texts using drama, role play, models and film by:
- Role playing stories that are familiar to them
- Performing and reading aloud texts as well as their own compositions
- Using drama techniques, such as, but not limited to, conscience alley and freeze frames, to explore character
- Using a range of reading and inference skills to explore film clips
Positive Role Models
- Adults engage in reading themselves and talk about the books they have read.
- Author visits to the school to inspire and encourage reading and writing.
- Bedtime stories, created by staff throughout school, are uploaded to the school's social media and shared across the year.
Our Remote Reading Offer
During periods of remote learning, such as a national/local lockdown and a closure of bubbles to most children, we continue to aim for every child to make progress through fostering a love of reading.
Our reading offer during this time is as follows:
Reading for Pleasure
Children can enjoy reading purely for reading’s sake by:
- A class shared text daily: this will be online in a video read by a member of staff.
- Using high-quality texts: all of our planning and lessons will continue to use high-quality texts
- Opportunities for quiet reading in class throughout the week: we ask that children have the opportunity to read quietly at home or for children to be read to.
Teaching of Reading
Teaching of reading remains mostly the same. Reading lessons are supplemented by audio and video to support children in their learning.
Range of Texts
Children are encouraged to explore a range of genres, authors, structures and complexity of texts by:
- Using a range of age-appropriate texts:
- We recommend a range of online reading tools such as Oxford Owl and Teach My Monster To Read.
- We recommend lovereading4kids.com for a variety of extracts for children. In addition, there is a free Kindle App from which there are some free books to download and Oak National Academy are also offering free books online.
- Within our reading lessons, there will be a mixture of different genres will be used and questioning will be used that will challenge the children and include a range of question types to suit the text.
Shared reading
Children have opportunities to share texts, talk about books, read to others and be read to: in lockdown, we encourage children to listen to our stories online and to join in with reading sessions by responding to assignments set or discussing with someone at home what they have read or heard.
Positive Role Models
All adults across school have engaged in reading themselves and bedtime stories have been shared (as read by different adults across school) to promote a love of stories and reading. During these adults engage in reading themselves and talk about the book they are reading.
