English - Reading

Intent

At Danesholme Junior Academy we believe that reading is an essential life skill, and we are committed to enabling our children to become lifelong readers.

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.

Reading is a skill that enables children to develop their learning across the wider curriculum and lays the foundations for success in future lines of study and employment. We recognise the importance of taking a consistent whole school approach to the teaching of reading in order to close any gaps and to target the highest possible number of children reaching the expected standard or higher.

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

Reading and phonics Implementation

At Danesholme Academies we use a synthetic phonics programme called Read Write Inc. This programme is a method of learning letter sounds and blending them together to read and write words. Children who have not met the required standard for phonics in Year 1 or 2 have daily phonics sessions working through the phases either individually or in small group sessions into Key Stage 2.

Reading is at the heart of the Junior Academy curriculum. Through daily reading for pleasure sessions, daily story time, novel-led learning, and twice weekly formal comprehension lessons, we ensure reading is given priority in the timetable and that pupils learn to hone their reading skills as well as develop a love for reading.

At Danesholme Junior Academy all classes follow a structured approach to reading activities. All sessions are interactive and teachers facilitate speaking and listening opportunities, with children working hard individually. Passive learning is minimised and engagement promoted through regular use of think-pair-share, responses on mini-whiteboards and collaborative tasks.

High quality texts and passages are chosen, appropriate to the expectations of the year group or ability of children, and teachers use this to model the application of the agreed reading skills. Children are taught to notice breakdown in reading - identifying words/phrases they don’t understand and strategies to fix breakdown in meaning. Children are taught to relate the text to themselves, previous reading experiences and the world around them. This is modelling is taught in weekly active reading comprehension lessons.

Further to modelled sessions, children have the opportunity to read texts with greater independence and apply their skills when responding to the wide range of domain questions.

Utilising a novel and text led curriculum, rich reading opportunities are provided across the curriculum, exposing children to a wide range of quality texts providing context to learning.

At Danesholme Junior Academy we believe that regular reading at home is an important tool in developing reading skills.

Our reading scheme ensures children are offered high-quality books that reflect the diversity of our modern world.

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 through the Key Stage 2 curriculum.

As a Year 6 reader, transitioning into secondary school, we aspire that children are 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 and all areas of the curriculum. We firmly believe that reading is the key to all learning and so the impact of our reading curriculum goes beyond the results of the statutory assessments.

In addition to this:

• Parents and carers will have a good understanding of how they can support reading at home, and contribute regularly to home-school records.
• The % of pupils working at age related expectations and above age-related expectations within each year group 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)