Reading

Intent:
At Starcross Primary School, we believe that reading is the most important part of the school curriculum and an essential life skill. The development of reading skills is a key focus. We aim to inspire a true love of reading and are committed to ensuring all children are fluent, enthusiastic and motivated readers.

“Teach a child to read and keep that child reading and we will change everything. And I mean everything.” Jeanette Winterson

At the heart of our strategy is our drive to foster a love of reading, enriching children’s learning through carefully designed teaching activities that utilise imaginative stories and thought-provoking texts. We recognise the importance of taking a consistent whole school approach to the teaching of reading to enable all children to succeed.

We have high expectations of all children and we encourage children to challenge themselves, persevere and aim high.

Early Reading and Phonics Implementation:
At Starcross Primary School, we use a synthetic phonics programme called Read Write Inc (RWI). This programme is a method of learning letter sounds and blending them together to read and write words. Children access daily RWI sessions every morning from 10:00 – 10:30. In the lesson, children are taught 40+ graphemes (sounds) and the skills to be able to confidently decode and blend the sounds within words independently.

This is supported by a comprehensive scheme of reading books which the children read in class and at home. RWI is designed to foster confidence and enjoyment in reading specifically because the children have already learned the sounds that will be contained in the books they read and are therefore, able to succeed in their reading.

Phonics Sounds
Phonics Sounds Set 1, 2 and 3

Expectations of Progress
Expectations of Progress Sept 2023

Reading Implementation in KS2
We deliver daily reading lessons to all children in KS2. These develop children’s fluency and comprehension of a range of texts and genres to develop their confidence in reading more challenging texts and developing their love of reading by engaging in interesting high-quality texts with a range of themes. During whole class guided reading sessions, children are taught the key skills of vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval and sequencing or summarising (VIPERS).

Renaissance Accelerated Reader
Renaissance Accelerated Reader is a computer-based program we use to monitor reading practice and progress. The Accelerated Reader programme encourages children to read independently at their own level and pace and helps to foster a love of reading alongside a passion to succeed.

Children ready for this scheme will be quizzed at 3 points in the year to answer a series of retrieval, prediction and inference skills. This will then point them to a ZPD (Zone of Proximal development), so the children know which level reading books to read. The children complete a reading comprehension quiz after every book to ensure they have read and understood the book they have chosen; this helps the children to develop their reading comprehension skills. Teachers use the quiz scores to track each child’s progress and ensure they are continuing to make progress and succeed.

Reading interventions are in place for those children who are not progressing with their reading or who have been identified as the lowest 20% of our year group readers. We provide interventions to support and develop their reading skills. In order to maintain consistency, catch up interventions produced by Read Write Inc are utilised across Key Stage 2. This might include reading with an adult or a buddy reader from another class as well as targeted 1:1 support to bridge the gaps. The impact of these interventions is monitored and reviewed half termly.

Reading at Home
At Starcross Primary School we believe that regular reading at home is an important tool in developing reading skills. Levelled titles from the Read Write Inc and Accelerated Reader schemes are used for home-reading to ensure that children experience a wide breadth of reading opportunities across different genres. The children are provided with a reading book and a Reading Diary. This is the way we communicate between home and school, and we ask that parents regularly feedback how their child is progressing.

Reading for Pleasure
Each classroom has a book corner, with a selection of fiction and non-fiction books. Children are encouraged to use these areas in the classroom as a calm and welcoming space for reading. Children are able to take these books home to read alongside their Accelerated Reader and RWI books.

We also have a well-resourced and welcoming school library where Accelerated Reader children go to select their new book.
Every class is read to by their teacher daily. Our reading spine includes a range of genres and are diverse. These are one of our favourite sessions of the day.

Reading Spine (EYFS to Year 6)
Reading Spine

Impact
As we believe that reading is key to all learning, the impact of our reading curriculum goes beyond the result of statutory assessments. Children have the opportunity to enter the wide and varied magical worlds that reading opens up to them. As they develop their own interest in books, a deep love of literature across a range of genres cultures and styles is enhanced.
Through the teaching of systematic phonics and reading enquiry, our aim is for children to become fluent and confident readers who can apply their knowledge and experience to a range of texts throughout the Key Stage 2 curriculum. The children will have learned to read books to enhance their knowledge and understanding in the curriculum and to become life-long readers.

For our Year 6 readers transitioning into secondary school, we aspire that the children will be fluent, confident and able readers, who can access a range of texts for pleasure and enjoyment, as well as use their reading skills to unlock learning in all areas of the curriculum.

In addition to this we expect that:
• Parents and carers to have a good understanding of how they can support reading at home and to contribute regularly to home-school records.
• The percentage of pupils working at age related expectations and above age-related expectations will be at least in line with national averages and will match the ambitious targets of individual children.
• There will be no significant gaps in the progress of different groups of pupils (e.g. disadvantaged vs non-disadvantaged) from their starting points.

Click on the images below for more Read Write Inc videos.

Fred says – Colours

Speed minutes Set 1- lesson 1

Speed minutes Set 2 – Lesson 2

Speed minutes. Set 3 – Lesson 1

Writing

Rationale:
At Starcross Primary School, our writing curriculum is designed to enable all children to become imaginative, confident and precise writers. Gaining and using skills in writing not only affects every child’s progress in school, but also gives them a voice to share their thoughts and ideas throughout their life.

Curriculum Design for Writing:
At the core of our curriculum is the belief that children should be taught using high quality texts that vary in genre, show diversity and are inspiring for our children. By using this structure to shape our writing curriculum, children are given the opportunity to explore all, or part of, a book which demonstrates an effective model of a genre. This allows the children to understand an author’s choices and intentions and also provides the children with clear end points and outcome pieces to work towards.
Through teaching writing skills and grammar alongside these high-quality texts, children are able to write for a range of purposes and audiences. Our writing curriculum is taught with a logical progression of texts, so children have to opportunity to consolidate and reinforce previous learning.
At Starcross Primary School, our children’s writing journey begins in the early years and sequentially builds knowledge and skills, year-on-year.

EYFS:
In reception, children will explore three core texts per term. These will be used to engage the children to discuss stories and learn new vocabulary. The children will start to learn how to form letters correctly. They will be encouraged to use their knowledge of phonics to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds. By the end of the year, they will begin to write simple sentences which can be read by themselves and others.

Curriculum Choices for Writing:
·      Literacy Shed
·      Devon Education Services
·      No-nonsense Spelling
·      RWI phonics

Writing Progression (Year 1 – 6)
Year 1-6 – Writing Progression

Handwriting:
We use Letter-join’s online handwriting resource and Lesson Planners as the basis of our handwriting teaching as it covers all the requirements of the National Curriculum.

Handwriting is a basic skill that influences the quality of work throughout the curriculum. By the end of Key Stage 2, all pupils should have the ability to produce fluent, legible and, eventually, speedy joined-up handwriting, and to understand the different forms of handwriting used for different purposes.

Our intention is to make handwriting an automatic process that does not interfere with creative and mental thinking.

Aims:
To develop a neat, legible, speedy handwriting style using continuous cursive letters, which leads to producing letters and words automatically in independent writing.

To establish and maintain high expectations for the presentation of written work.

For pupils to understand, by the end of Year 6, the importance of neat presentation and the need for different letterforms (cursive, printed or capital letters) to help communicate meaning clearly.

Handwriting Progression Document
Handwriting Progression

Spelling in Years 2 to 6
The RWI scheme is a good basis to learn the letters needed for particular sounds.  This can then support spelling as the children begin to write.  From year 2, we use the No Nonsense Spelling scheme to continue to teach the spellings and spelling patterns appropriate for each year group.
Children will have a daily spelling lesson which will involve investigating the spelling pattern and exploring different methods to learn words which contain the pattern.  There are several different strategies that are used throughout the programme to help children learn and remember their spellings.

Spelling Progression Document
Spelling Progression