Intent
Reading
Reading is the gateway to accessing an enriching curriculum and, as such, reading is at the centre of our curriculum. We aim to foster a love of books and reading and provide children with a range of reading skills from early reading where they will listen to, hear and play with sounds, to the end of Key Stage 2 where they will have a deep understanding of the language they read and will have access to, and enjoy, a range of genres. We aim to provide children with a variety of reading experiences and a chance to understand what it means to be a reader and an author. We aim to invite visitors into school to share their own reading experiences and find opportunities for the children within school to share their own reading experiences with each other.
For those children where reading is a difficult skill to acquire, we aim to immerse them in reading opportunities to ensure a rich vocabulary is developed. From teachers reading for pleasure to all children in school, independent reading sessions and guided reading groups, the love for and pleasure of reading will be encouraged. Our reading resources will support all stages of reading and support and intervention will be in place to ensure all children at The Glebe Primary make the best progress they can in this area. By ensuring that all children becoming fluent and confident readers, we can ensure that they are best placed to access the next stages in their learning.
Our overall aims for the development of children’s reading in school are:
For children to:
- Read easily, fluently and with good understanding
- Develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
- Develop a widened vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
- Appreciate a range of diversity through the reading materials they access.
Writing
At The Glebe Primary, we encourage our writers to be independent and confident so that, by the time they leave us, they are able to make their own choices in their writing and can confidently use their writing skills to respond to any given task.
We recognise that some learners will favour certain types of writing over others, so we ensure that all learners are given the opportunity throughout the year to show their true potential by giving them a range of writing activities.
Implementation
Reading
The ability to read confidently and fluently allows children to be able to confidently access the next stages of their learning, whether this be from Early Years into Key Stage 1, Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 2, or Key Stage 2 into the Secondary Curriculum. To be able to access age appropriate texts with interest, fluency and understanding is important to us at The Glebe as we know this will help our pupils unlock and gain access to the wider curriculum.
The teaching of Early Reading to Reading in Year 6 ensures:
- Daily teaching of phonics, beginning with exposure to phonics in Nursery, followed by discrete teaching of phonics in Reception, Year 1 and, for some children, in Year 2, using Little Wandle Letters & Sounds Revised.
- The explicit teaching of Early Reading in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2, using Little Wandle Letters & Sounds Revised.
- Children have opportunities to practice reading at their own level using closely-matched texts from our reading system, designed to follow on from our phonics scheme.
- Children are exposed to a wide and diverse range of texts and genres through independent reading, whole-class teaching of reading and shared ‘Reading for Pleasure’ texts.
- Reading strategies continue to be taught beyond phonics and into KS2 using VIPERs skills to teach explicit reading skills.
- Staff regularly read for pleasure to their classes.
- The expectation that children will be supported by parents and carers and read at home, which is monitored through home-school reading records.
- Children will read for a wide range of reasons, including to find information and for pleasure.
- Targeted interventions linked to Little Wandle Letters & Sounds Revised, fluency or comprehension take place who need more support in each year group.
- Children are exposed to a range of authors and genres throughout school and are able to discuss their own preferences.
Click here to see more about how Reading is taught at The Glebe Primary School in each key phase.
Writing
Children at The Glebe are encouraged to write for a range of purposes: • To entertain • To inform • To persuade • To discuss, considering their purpose and audience carefully for each piece.
At the end of every term from Y1 onward, we ensure learners are given the chance to complete an independent learning task where they are able to control an element of the writing outcome and make their own decisions. In Early Years, opportunities for independent choices in their writing are threaded throughout.
From EYFS to the end of Y6, we ensure all children can access age-appropriate writing opportunities and we ensure progression is made throughout the genres taught and throughout year groups.
At EYFS, learners are engaged to write and are enthused to write; at KS1, we write to entertain and inform; at Lower KS2 (in Years 3 & 4), we also begin to explore the language of persuasion and at Upper KS2 (in Years 5 & 6), we explore the full range of purposes for writing, including how to develop the language of discussion. Children also have more opportunities to show how their own independent choices impact on the audience in the writing they produce.
Written composition
Children’s writing generally develops at a slower pace than their reading. Before they can write independently in a way that can be read by others, they need to know: • what they want to say • how to identify sounds in words • at least one way to spell each of the sounds of English • how to form letters.
At The Glebe Primary, we teach children these early skills through our use of a systematic, synthetic phonics programme. The programme we use is Little Wandle Letters & Sounds Revised. Once children can read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy and associated tricky words, we begin to teach further spelling patterns in line with the National Curriculum 2014.
Our chosen spelling programme is ‘No-nonsense Spelling’, which is taught from Years 2-6 once children are secure with Phase 5 GPCs. The programme builds on the strong foundations of phonics teaching from Little Wandle Letters & Sounds Revised, by supporting children in understanding morphology, spelling strategies, the orthographic nature of words, patterns, word origins, common exception words and personal spellings. It follows a model of five spelling sessions across two weeks (although in Year 2 these are daily).
At The Glebe Primary, we teach spelling and apply it in spelling sessions and writing across the curriculum. As such, we do not send home lengthy lists of spellings to be learned, instead we focus on a maximum of 5 words to send home, where appropriate in targeted year groups, linked to weekly spelling teaching.
In each child’s Writing journey at The Glebe Primary, we endeavour to ensure support and challenge within a supportive environment where we strive to Be The Best We Can Be
Impact
We measure the impact of our curriculum by ensuring that all children at The Glebe Primary School:
- Are confident and fluent readers with a good understanding of the texts they’re reading;
- Are able to access additional support and intervention if they are finding reading difficult;
- Can discuss the texts they are reading and confidently explain their choices;
- Access a range of writing opportunities and are enthused to write regularly for a range of audiences and purposes;
- Have the necessary writing skills to access the curriculum for the stage of their learning;
- Enjoy reading and writing and are prepared for the next stage of their learning because of this;
- Are developing a rich vocabulary throughout their learning at The Glebe, with a good understanding of the vocabulary choices they make;
- Effectively apply the spelling and grammar rules they have been taught;
- Actively discuss their own learning and enjoy celebrating their successes.
