Intent

At Southwood Primary School, we aim to provide children with a literacy-rich environment, high quality texts and inspiring learning opportunities, which will help the children to:

• Gain a life-long enjoyment of reading and books
• Read accurately, fluently and with understanding
• Apply a knowledge of structured synthetic phonics in order to decode unfamiliar words with increasing accuracy and speed

• Read with expression, clarity and confidence

• Broaden their vocabulary
• Develop comprehension skills and analyse what they read
• Participate in discussion and debate about texts

Implementation

Take One Book (Y2-Y6)

Skills for fluent reading, vocabulary building and comprehension are taught through exciting book-based units from Just Imagine's Take One Book including non-fiction and poetry.  These units offer engaging whole class reading experiences and meet the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum.

Where possible, books are selected to be cross-curricular e.g. Gut Garden in Y4 links to science (digestive system) and Rose Blanche in Y6 links to history (WW2).

The four-stage framework for reading is based on up-to-date research and tested in schools.  High-quality dialogic teaching underpins and is key to the process.

Stage 1

Hook and Orientation takes account of what readers need to know to access a text.

Stage 2

First Encounters secures literal understanding and provides opportunities for exploration of texts as children develop their understanding.

Stage 3

Digging Deeper focuses on teaching new skills, unlocking the layers of meaning with text and language study.

Stage 4

Review and Reflect includes revisiting a text, thinking about thematic content and text to world discussions.

Impact

The impact of the reading curriculum is assessed during and after each unit of reading, with the opportunity for the teachers and pupils to evaluate.  Gaps in reading skills are identified by the teacher and carried forward to future units of reading where necessary. Reading objectives for the unit (aligned to the National Curriculum) are shared with the pupils at the beginning and their reading is continuously assessed against these areas.  Formal assessment judgements are made termly and pupils' progress against the end of year expectations are monitored.  Children who have 1:1 reading with an adult are also benchmarked termly to assess their progress.