Our curriculum approach to reading reflects our trust-wide values of ‘courage, compassion, collaborative service and excellence’. In particular, we are keen for pupils to develop a true passion and love for reading as well as develop as confident, competent readers.
We believe and expect that everyone can achieve and will learn to read at Castle. Everyone leaves Castle as a reader, opening the gateway to providing a life of learning and pleasure.
Reading is an integral part of the school curriculum and therefore importance is given to it in every subject, as well as the discrete teaching of reading.
For all children to become resilient, fluent and accurate readers.
For children to have the opportunity to develop their reading habits and styles.
For children to be encouraged to explore and expand their reading repertoire from a rich and wonderful selection of texts..
For Castle to have an authentic reading culture across the school where all children choose to, want to and enjoy reading.
All children will read daily at Castle School. To ensure consistency in EYFS and across KS1, the school uses the ‘Unlocking Letters and Sounds’ phonics programme. There is a strong emphasis on phonics teaching which is then built on and consolidated through the rest of the school.
From Year 2 onwards, reading is a combination of UL&S (for decoding and fluency) and the trust framework for the teaching and learning of reading. Through these daily whole class reading sessions, the children have the opportunity to broaden their experience of literature with a clear and purposeful synergy to other areas of their learning.
In addition to this, there will be time allocated for independent reading and reading for pleasure. Teachers will have a daily, systematic ‘read-aloud programme’ in every class which incorporates high quality fiction, non fiction and poetry. We work hard to develop an authentic reading culture across the school with a number of key events including bakes for books, Summer Reading Challenge, Cracking Good Read boxes, annual book fair, book weeks, World Book Day and author focus.
Parents will be involved through their support with home reading. All children in KS1 are issued a reading book that is appropriate for their reading ability and is changed weekly. In KS2, children are guided by teacher suggestions for appropriate home school reading books.
Parents are motivated through UL&S workshops offered in September to new Reception parents, home school booklets on how to support your child with reading, book lists with Christmas present suggestions, Summer Reading Challenge in the local library, annual book fairs, providing bakes for books and Seesaw activities uploaded to share with parents the reading the children are doing at school.
At each stage, from Reception, children have developed an ability to read for pleasure and comprehension. Decoding, fluency and vocabulary are well developed and children are able to read for meaning using a range of strategies.
The impact of reading at Castle has been seen in a number of ways:
In KS1, phonics is given a high priority. Teaching is daily, purposeful and rigorous. Teachers use UL&S materials to support their planning and delivery of early reading. This is accompanied by daily reading for pleasure and comprehension using comprehension questions and a high quality stimulus.
From Year 3 onwards, teachers plan from the KS2 Trust planning model.
A reading spine of core texts is available for each year group to enable teacher’s to select the highest quality books/extracts when selecting the material they use.
Individual long- and short-term planning demonstrates how reading learning lesson sequences are increasing the depth of understanding and range of knowledge throughout the primary years. A full copy of the progression grid is available for reading.
Once children have finished the UL&S programme, they record their reading learning in books. These are marked in line with the school marking policy.
Work/reading events will also be documented through Seesaw and Facebook.
Phonic assessment is carried out at the end of each half term to inform next steps and to ensure children are in the correct group to meet their phonic needs.
In KS2, as part of formative assessment, children complete PIXL reading tests. Teachers use this information to inform areas of focus. Regular assessment in daily shared reading and knowing each child as a reader is used to identify what is working and what needs adapting. Those children who are not meeting ARE are quickly identified and given extra practice. Assessment materials including PM benchmarking are used to pick up on issues such as fluency and comprehension.
On our annual reports, which are given to parents at the end of the year, a judgement will be made regarding their child’s attainment in reading relating to the National Curriculum for their year group.
Curriculum leader to collate evidence including analysing how planning for learning for Year 2 and above matches the evidence in books, learning walks, speaking to the pupils about their learning and discussing with colleagues what has gone well and any areas for development.
Where relevant the implementation of school policies (such as marking) will be reviewed to ensure the workload for reading is both manageable and making an impact on the children’s learning.
