Principles
- Reading is a vital basic skill which all children should be able to acquire.
- Teaching reading must be high priority for all staff in order for children to develop skills and have a positive habit towards reading.
- The needs of all pupils are taken into account when teaching reading, through differentiation of resources and teaching approaches.
- Shared reading at home is very important. All staff to monitor this in order to continue to develop strong home/school links with reading.
Individual Reading
- All children should have a school reading book from the reading scheme/library.
- Pupils should be on a suitable level, using the Reading Behaviours booklet/observations.
- This level is to be regularly reviewed, every half term/term in order to assess progression and kept on a class list.
- Books are to be changed/reviewed on a regular basis (minimum weekly, depending on the book) and written in both reading records, one of which will stay in school as a permanent record.
- Staff need to sign/comment/praise when a reading book has been changed.
- KS1-books will be changed by an adult
- KS2-books will be changed independently by each pupil, using the coloured banding scheme.
- Voluntary readers should be also encouraged to complete reading records.The school reading records will continue through the school with the child.
Guided Reading
- Guided reading sessions are held on a daily basis in through all key stages.
- Children are grouped with others of a similar ability and texts are picked to match that level. These groups need to be monitored and changed every half term if necessary.
- The coloured band level each group are on should be the same or one level higher than individual reading books, depending on the level on challenge you would like.
- Notes from each session need to be recorded by all staff, in order to monitor/assess reading progression and target areas for the next session. (These will be passed to the next year teacher.)
- The use of key questions, including those based on the assessment focuses is encouraged, to help develop reading skills.
- The content of guided reading sessions will vary depending on each key stage/level of ability, for example, the teaching of phonics and key words to inferential skills.
- As with independent reading, each group’s book level needs to be regularly monitored.
When a guided reading session is completed, a simple comment needs to be put into pupils individual reading records so that parents know that their child has read in school that day-this can be in the form of stickers/stamp/signature.
Resources Individual Reading
- This is organized into book band levels and is made up of a mix of fiction, poetry and non fiction titles from a range of published schemes e.g. Oxford Reading Tree.
- These are kept in colour coded boxes in designated areas in FS, KS1 and KS2. There are posters of how the scheme works in all areas.
- A book bag will be given to all KS2 pupils at the beginning of each school year.
Guided Reading
- As with the individual reading books, guided reading sets are book banded and in colour coded boxes in FS, KS1 and KS2. There are several guided reading schemes, however there is a complete set of Rigby Star books which goes across all book band levels (with teaching guides), kept in KS1.
