At Toft Hill Primary School, we recognise that reading is crucial and fundamental to the educational success of our pupils. It provides an opportunity to develop a rich vocabulary, influence high quality writing and also provides a gateway to success in other subjects. But more than this, we want our children to also develop a love of reading that will open their minds to a world of adventures and opportunities. We aim to develop their reading skills and provide opportunities that will take them beyond their day to day life experiences, developing a sense of curiosity and understanding of the world.
Our reading curriculum and offer is influenced by the work of Dr Rudine Sims Bishop, who suggested that books should provide;
- Mirrors – that allow children to see themselves and own experiences
- Windows – that they can look through to see other worlds that they can then compare to their own
- Sliding glass doors – that allow children to enter and experience different worlds
Reading is central to day to day life in our school. Children are read to as a whole class daily, read in groups, read individually to an adult and read independently.
Our children’s journey to become fluent, independent readers begins at the very start of school in EYFS with Phonics.
Phonics
At Toft Hill Primary School, we use the Pearson Phonics Bug programme to help your child learn to read. The programme follows an approach of synthesising phonemes associated with graphemes a child sees; or put another way, learning to read by blending the sounds associated with the letters a child sees. The programme is the product of extensive research on effective ways to teach children how to read.
Children are taught a daily structured, systematic, synthetic phonics session for approximately 30 minutes, following the Phonics Bug scheme. This is a DfE approved scheme and our school has complete fidelity to it. Daily sessions follow the same components:
- Revisit and review session – to reinforce prior learning to help children to know and remember more of their phonics learning
- Teach session for new learning – children learn a new grapheme/phoneme (letter/sound) correspondence
- Practise session – to consolidate new learning
- Application – children apply new learning into sentence reading or writing contexts to strengthen understanding
Grapheme/ phoneme (letter/ sound) correspondences for reading and spelling are taught in a specified order. ‘Tricky Words’ that cannot be decoded using phonics and need a whole word approach are also taught systematically throughout. Please click the link below to view our EYFS and KS1 Phonics Overview.
EYFS and KS1 Phonics Overview/Plan
Children are assessed regularly to ensure that any children experiencing difficulties are identified quickly and appropriate support can be put in place in a timely manner.
For more information on phonics, how it helps children to learn to read and how you can support your child at home, please click on the video link below.
Phonics Glossary
Phonics Glossary of terminology
Producing and saying the phonemes (sounds) correctly is important. Please click on the image below for a link that provides support with this. Click on the image below and click on each grapheme (letter/s) to hear the associated phoneme (sound).
Bug Club Phonics Reading Books & e books
Children read books from the Phonics Bug scheme that only contain phoneme/grapheme correspondences and ‘Tricky Words’ that they have already been taught. Children usually read with a qualified adult at least three times per week. Some children may require additional support with their reading, and in that case, they read with a qualified adult daily. In addition to opportunities in school, children take books home to practise and apply their skills. Children and parents are encouraged to read each book together a minimum of three times to encourage children to read as fluently as possible. Children have reading record books for teachers and parents to communicate about progress in reading and phonics.
In addition to the paper books that children read and take between home and school, they receive log in details to their own Active Learn account where they can access a library rich with ebooks and phonics games to practise and reinforce their learning.
Click on the link to access the Active Learn log in page.
To get the most from the Active Learn online learning experience, please click on the link to open our school’s detailed guidance.
The videos below will show you tutorials on how to access Active Learn Primary and How to navigate Bug Club & Bug Club Phonics ebooks and games.
Reading
As detailed above, a phonics-based approach is used to start our children on their independent reading journey. Children learn to decode books that are closely matched to the graphemes (letters) and phonemes (sounds) they are currently learning.
It is usual for children to keep the same book for at least three reads to help them to develop their fluency in reading. A reading record book is used as a communication tool between parents and teachers. Children are rewarded for their commitment to regular reading.
As soon as children complete the phonics scheme and are confidently achieving the required level of competence and fluency in their phonics and reading, they smoothly transition to the Bug Club Readers to further develop their reading skills. Further information can be found in the Bug Club Document.
Children are then taught a broader range of reading skills to develop their understanding of the texts they read. Within the scheme, books are grouped by a coloured band system and pupils are directed towards the appropriate band for their reading level, working through them in a structured, systematic way. In school, pupils read their book in a small group or one to one with a qualified member of staff. To further develop their understanding and reading comprehension skills, children will participate in guided reading sessions where the specific skills will be taught and practised. At home, children continue to read and practise. Parents/ Carers can use the advice and discussion points in the front and back covers of the books to help to develop their child’s reading fluency and understanding.Online in the Active Learning zones, children can read ebooks and answer questions throughout.
Teachers can access feedback to track pupils progress with these ebooks. Children continue to log their home and school reading in their Reading Record book. Regular reading continues to be encouraged.
When children are able to read fluently and independently, they are assessed using the Star Reading system for Accelerated Reader. The assessment provides a standardised score and a reading age for the child. If they achieve the required standard, they are then eligible to begin using Accelerated Reader. Teachers monitor children’s reading scores to ensure the system is right for them. In our school, Accelerated Reader is used to help children to develop a motivation for and love of reading independently as well as helping them to progress.
Accelerated Reader
The Accelerated Reader approach moves away from the traditional reading scheme to include real books by a range of popular, modern and classic authors and poets. There are also non-fiction texts, graphic novels and play scripts to name a few additional text types. The system determines the level of readability for this vast range of texts. After assessment, children are allocated a numerical range from which they can choose books. This is closely monitored by teachers.
There is an expectation that children will read for at least 25 minutes each day between home and school. Independent reading and level of understanding is confirmed through an online retrieval quiz taken on the completion of a book. The aim is for children to achieve a minimum of 85% success rate over the term. Children are rewarded for achieving an average of 85% or above for the books they’ve read and with an engaged time of 25 minutes per day. Parents can track their child’s success by signing up for email updates.
We provide books that broaden horizons and help learners connect with the world around them with a focus on positive moral values, developing empathy and showing diversity. Further information on AR book levels can be accessed online, where book levels can be checked.
Reading Curriculum
We have used a book-based approach to evolve a high-quality literacy curriculum which develops reading comprehension and writing composition, whilst also fostering a whole school love of reading and writing. We have used our extensive knowledge of our pupils, community and our curriculum to carefully select core texts for each class to be studied in depth. These are identified in our Reading Spine Documents. Please Click on the links below to view the reading spine for each year group.
- Year R Reading Spine
- Year 1 Reading Spine
- Year 2 Reading Spine
- Year 3 Reading Spine
- Year 4 Reading Spine
- Year 5 Reading Spine
- Year 6 Reading Spine
Our English schemes of work throughout school aim to develop our pupils reading comprehension skills. Teachers take a creative approach to developing a deeper understanding of each text. We place vocabulary and background knowledge at the core of our approach because we view it as being integral to developing a wider range of comprehension skills. The ultimate aim for our reading comprehension lessons are that they should make it more likely that a child will understand the next book they read independently. Teachers make book recommendations to enable pupils to use new knowledge and skills in their independent reading.
Pupils are also taught discrete Reading Comprehension sessions where they focus on the key comprehension skills of;
- Vocabulary
- Inference
- Prediction
- Explanation
- Retrieval
- Sequencing/Summarising
The use of the VIPERS acronym helps our pupils to remember and refer to these key skills, whatever text they are working on. Teachers often use shorter texts that link to the current class novel or wider curriculum subjects to develop a richer vocabulary and understanding by linking learning.
Discrete Reading Comprehension sessions are 20-30 minutes long, are taught a minimum of three times per week and are usually at the very start of each day.
Teachers’ reading to pupils
There is an expectation that all teachers will read to their class on a regular basis. A wide variety of books are chosen to offer children the broadest reading experience possible.
Books are chosen carefully and for a number of reasons. We look for books that broaden children’s horizons; deal with sensitive or difficult issues; offer a diversity that our context does not offer and books that are fun, exiting or just wonderful.