Reading at Oakthorpe Primary School

 

 

The Castle by Jorge Mendez Blake

 

This year we have been taking part in a SIFF funded reading project with a range of schools across Leicester and Leicestershire. The funding has provided us with valuable CPD alongside funding to work with Roving Books to develop our reading for pleasure range and update our topic books that are available in the library. Next we would like to use the funding to develop our texts that are available for VIPERS sessions, develop our phonics resources and freshen up our library.

 

 

How is reading taught at Oakthorpe?

 

General Statement of Intent

 

At Oakthorpe we are passionate about developing enthuastic and confident readers who can understand a wide range of texts. Reading at Oakthorpe is a core skill that underpins our whole curriculum. We know that learning to read, and reading to learn, is the foundation for future success. We recognise the importance of this academic skill and we want to ensure that every child leaves us by the end of Key Stage 2 a competent reader.

 

Specific Aims:

 

Children should:

• Develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information;

• Have a wide range of opportunies to develop vocabulary, being taught this in both reading sessions and across the wider school day;

• Be able to read aloud fluently, with confidence and expression;

• Be able to listen and respond to texts being read aloud;

• Be able to extract meaning from a text;

• Develop the skills required for the critical reading of texts;

• Be taught strategies for reading including:

  -Phonics (sounding out letters in a word and blending together) and visual (whole word recognintion of words that cannot be sounded out).

  - Contextual (the use of picture and prior knowledge and understanding of the world).

  -Grammatical – pupils taught the understanding of language (morphology and syntax).

• Have access to a wide range of texts and learn to appreciate our rich and varied cultural heritage;

• Gain awareness of the close links between reading and writing activities.

 

Our Approach to Teaching Reading

 

Reading is seen as a clear priority on class timetables and the teaching of reading at Oakthorpe is made up of the following elements:

 

• Home Reading- daily

• Phonics- daily within EYFS and KS1 for all children.

• Daily Whole Class Reading in the form of VIPERS sessions. 4 x a week 30 mins with one 60 minute extended session per week (replacing literacy). These are separate to but may complement literacy sessions.

• 1 reading for enjoyment/ timetabled session for children to discuss with staff and peers what they are reading.

• Modelled and shared reading within the English curriculum and across the wider curriculum.

• Pupils regularly reading books and stories aloud (timetabled and consistent across the key stage) evident in subjects beyond literacy.

• A story time daily featuring ‘demonstrated reading’ from the teacher (a chance for the teacher to model fluency and the process of making inferences when reading to pupils).

• Opportunities for fluency development (reading of a text is modelled by an adult or a peer. Pupils then have the opportunity to then read the same text aloud with appropriate feedback).

• Teachers extending pupils vocabulary across all subjects.

• Classrooms to show reading as a clear priority in all classrooms. Pupils have access to high quality texts.

• Access to the school library.

 

 

We invite authors in as much as possible to encourage reading for pleasure. Recently Neil Griffiths visited us to share his stories (2018).

 

 

Please follow these links below to learn more about how we teach reading: