Reading | Silver End Academy

Reading

As part of the Ofsted Requirements schools are required to provide details and names of any phonics or reading schemes being used in Key Stage 1. See Phonics Tab for more information on our Phonics Scheme 'The Song of Sounds'.

At Silver End Academy, we acknowledge that evidence shows there is a positive relationship between reading frequency, reading enjoyment and attainment. Children are more likely to be academically successful the more they read. Through the Curriculum we will endeavour to promote pupils’ independent reading through the development of reading skills such as decoding skills and word recognition. We will also build on pupils’ reading interests to engender a love of reading and books to foster positive attitudes. Comprehension activities will also be implemented to ensure pupils have a secure understanding of text such as author’s intent, use of language, inference and deduction skills.

Reading

Through the teaching of Reading we aim to:

Ensure that all children have the chance to follow an enriched curriculum by getting them reading early: learning to read = reading to learn!
Provide children with a range of strategies they can draw upon when decoding text.
Build on the children’s language experiences and early reading skills
Encourage the transition from inexperienced readers to independent readers who read a variety of texts for different purposes
Encourage a high awareness of audience and the ability to adapt their language and style for different purposes/genres and audiences
Create a genuine love of reading and an appreciation of its value, so that the children choose to read for pleasure and are able to follow personal interests and use their research skills to extend their knowledge and understand of the world around them
Provide equal opportunities for all children to achieve success when reading.
Encourage a positive home/school relationship where parents support pupils reading regularly at home and pupils are keen to read.

Reading schemes in the school.

Throughout KS1 (Key Stage 1), pupils are provided with a range of fiction and non-fiction books which are regularly changed to aid progression with their reading. We use a range of popular and well established schemes including; Oxford Reading Tree, Floppy’s phonics and Big Cat Collins.

As pupils move into KS2 (Key Stage 2), they may continue to access reading schemes such as Ginn and Oxford Reading. However Renaissance Reading (Accelerated Reader) is an online resource used to track pupils understanding of text (comprehension) through pupils taking quizzes. Pupils may be free readers but access books in a particular band.

Strategies ~ helping our children learn to read.

The purpose of a ‘strategy check’ is to give the children an opportunity to practice and remember the different strategies they need to apply in order to read and understand texts. Strategies have been devised into Early Readers, Developing Readers and Active Reading Strategies.

Early readers

1:1 pointing:

Children practice pointing using a sentence from a story. Children show and use a pointing finger for each word read.

Picture clues:

What is happening in the pictures ~ could this give us a clue about what the unknown word could be?

Predicting:

Cover a word – predict what it could be and check. Model predicting a word.

Checking initial/final sounds – does it look right?

Cover the first/last letter – predict, then check. Point to the first letter – get your mouth ready to make the sound. Find the letter on an alphabet card/tile.

Applying phonics to words:

List some more challenging words in the text – decode these together using phonics – predict/discuss the meanings.

Checking meaning – does that make sense?

Explain that reading should always make sense. Practice re-reading to check meaning. Read a sentence – check it makes sense. Give the children two options – which one makes sense? Discuss what is happening on the page.

Re-reading to check:

Explain to the children the importance of going back and checking their reading. Model re-reading; practice re-reading.

Developing readers

Ask children to name the strategies they can use when they are unable to read a word. Ask the children to share the different things they can do when they do not understand a word, sentence or section of text.

Inferring meaning of unknown words:

List some more challenging words from the guided reading book on a white board or easel. Ask the children to read the words and predict what they mean. Read them the whole sentence so they can check their predictions.

Text layout:

Analyse a page of text (e.g. non-fiction) – how is it organised? Why? How do we read it?

Decoding unknown words: record difficult words from the text on cards or the board. Ask children to decode these words and explain what they did (i.e. syllables, phonics, knowing parts of words...) or predict the meaning of the words.

Checking meaning: read a sentence from the text which is more challenging; discuss what it means and how they know.

Active reading strategies:

Asking questions while they are reading:

Visualising: read a section of text – ask children to think about what pictures they see in their head.

Predicting: read the opening paragraph – summarise what they know so far and predict what might happen next – read the next paragraph to check.

Reading longer sentences (complex sentences):

Record the main clause from a complex sentence on the board – read it and discuss what it means – explain that authors often add more information to the sentence (subordinate clause) – add the subordinate clause and discuss how the two clauses relate to each other – locate the comma and explain that the clauses are usually split by a comma.

Identifying the main points: read the opening paragraph of the text to the children and ask them to identify the main points – list these on a board and discuss why other information is not key to the story.

Scanning: turn to a page of text and model how you scan the text for information – use a highlighter.

Skimming: model reading a paragraph quickly, looking for specific information (e.g. main characters; clues about setting).