Reading

Intent

At CVIS the intention is that children gain a firm understanding of what Reading is through a well-designed curriculum which is accessible to all and will maximise the development of every child’s ability and academic achievement. Our aim at CVIS is to implement lessons that are creative and thought provoking. We aim to give children the experience and confidence to develop skills in decoding, fluency and comprehension.

Our vision is to produce confident readers whilst also promoting a positive attitude towards reading and a love books. At CVIS we are committed to ensuring children understand the value and importance of Reading and can purposefully apply their knowledge to everyday life.

Implementation

Reading at CVIS is underpinned by the key principles from the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and Key Stage 1 National Curriculum (2014). We ensure knowledge and skills are built upon year-on-year and sequenced appropriately to maximise learning for all children. Children have access to a wide variety of books within the school. Each week children take home books appropriate to their current reading and comprehension level.

In 2020 we revitalised our comprehension offer to ensure that all skills were being covered. Our 5 key comprehension skills are based on: Vocabulary, Retrieval, Inference, Sequencing and Prediction.

Children have the opportunity to develop and apply their taught reading skills with known and unknown texts as part of the reading currirulum. This will allow teachers to balance the level of support given to developing comprehension skills with the need to model Age Related Expectations. 

High frequency sight words lists are used to develop and secure children’s sight vocabulary. These are reviewed, when necessary, to ensure that they are relevant to the curriculum, National Curriculum (NC) and Development Matters Document. Every child reads with an adult either on a 1:1 basis or within a groups at least once a week.

We develop fluency and a love of reading further by activities such as reading class stories, dressing up, dramatising storytelling, weekly library visits, visiting speakers, celebration days such as world book day and sharing stories form different cultures and countries around the world

EYFS specific:

Reading is the backbone of curriculum provision in EYFS and leads/supports the learning across a variety of areas. Children are exposed to a wide range of handpicked texts that cover a variety of genres. Opportunities to listen to stories, re-enact stories and sing rhymes are fundamental to establishing a love of reading early on. We use Essential Letters and Sounds phonics across the school, It is taught explicitly during the beginning of the year and then recapped throughout the rest of the year to fully embed the sound knowledge.

KS1 specific:

In KS1, our phonics programme follows the NC guidance ensuring that all children are exposed to all of the 40+ phonic sounds expected by end of KS1. Adult led group reading and comprehension sessions are part of the carousel system to support the development of both phonic knowledge, decoding, fluency and comprehension. 

Impact

Whilst in school, children have access to a varied programme, which allows them to discover and explore their strengths, as well as areas they might like to improve upon. The integral nature of reading and the learner creates an enormously rich palette from which a child may access fundamental abilities such as: achievement, self-confidence, interaction with and awareness of others and self-reflection. Children are exposed to range of texts aimed to inspire and engage them.

Whole-class sessions ensure that all children have the opportunity to thrive and learn from one another. Children work together to analyse texts and do not feel that tasks are made more simplistic. Support is given via Teacher / Teaching Assistant intervention and children are challenged through questioning and the expectation that they can support others or fully explain their thinking. Whole class teaching ensures all children are exposed to ARE+ texts and questioning so that no ceiling is put on learning. Exposing children to a variety of carefully mapped out texts ensures that their aspirations to become better readers are met. Reading is considered a core skill for learning in our school.