Reading At Camrose

Reading is central
to every child’s development

Camrose Primary school believes that reading is central to a child’s understanding of the school curriculum and is of vital importance in life. Fluent readers can access a full range of life experiences and can enjoy an amazing breadth of genres and writers.

At Camrose, we aim to develop a love and appreciation of reading which will stay with children for life. We hope to achieve this through careful planning and teaching using up-to-date strategies. We aim to use a breadth and range of reading materials and resources not only within English lessons and Focused Reading sessions but across the wider curriculum.

Our aim is for children to become fluent, independent and highly skilled readers.

Aims

It is our aim to allow children the opportunity:

To experience reading in a variety of situations so that it becomes a pleasurable & productive experience.
To access a wide range of print materials, including all genres of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, plays & pupils own writing.
To progress to becoming selective in their choice of reading materials.
To be knowledgeable about the purpose and organisation of books.
To nurture a love of reading.
To learn to read through a variety of methods.
To read to themselves or to others (peers and adults)
To read to a variety of audiences and to hear adults and children read to them.
To read regularly and to develop a respect for books.
To receive reading provision and support appropriate to individual ability.
To become aware of the link between reading and writing.
To use ICT to further the development and love of reading.

The classroom environment

Each classroom has a dedicated reading area which includes a variety of class books (Fiction and non-Fiction) which the children can choose and read for pleasure. These appeal to different genders and also reluctant readers. A selection of banded books are also available in each class for use during independent reading.

The teaching of reading

There are two distinct but related processes involved in teaching children to read: learning to read words and developing language comprehension. Both are essential for learning to read.

Developing word recognition and language comprehension skills

In the Foundation Stage and KS1 the priority is given to securing the development of word recognition skills

Children are taught:

grapheme-phoneme (letter/sound) correspondences (the alphabetic principle) in a clearly defined, incremental sequence.
to apply the highly important skill of blending (synthesising) phonemes in order, all through a word to read it.
to apply the skills of segmenting words into their constituent phonemes to spell them.
that blending and segmenting are reversible processes.
To achieve this there is high quality teaching of Phonics.

Phonics

Progression in phonics skills and knowledge are taught using the 'Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised' as our systematic, synthetic phonics (SSP) programme.

All children in the Early Years Foundation Stage and Year 1, receive a 25 minutes discrete phonics session every day. Daily Keep Up sessions are provided when gaps in learning is identified for individuals and small groups. Any child who has not passed the Phonics Screening test from Year 2 - Year 6 (including new arrivals to the school) follow the Little Wandle Programme until assessed as attaining Phase 5 Phonics.

Reading routines in key stage 1 & 2.

Focused Reading

Focused Reading is where the teacher works with the children to model fluent, expressive reading, the use of effective reading strategies and to encourage response to texts. It can be a vehicle for both teaching children to read (decode) and for teaching children about reading, including comprehension.

This also provides opportunities for children to access and enjoy rich, authentic texts which are slightly beyond their independent reading level. Sessions are generally planned in a sequence and involve reading for different purposes, with children using their developing skills and understanding as they become more familiar with the text.

Resources used for Focused Reading include fiction, poetry and non-fiction texts. The text is often enlarged to enable all children to see as well as to hear the text. This may be through the use of Big Books, ICT texts or interactive white boards (IWB).

All pupils are heard reading by the class teacher at least once a week. This can take place in either 1:1 or small group sessions.

At Camrose, children also have regular access to an online reading programme; Reading eggs and Reading Eggspress. These are designed to encourage and develop reading skills, at an appropriate level for each individual using stimulating texts, games and other reading focused activities.

For a more detailed look into reading at Camrose please refer to the menu on the right-hand side of this page.