Reading Statement of Intent for CMS

Reading Intent

It is our intention that all pupils are able to read fluently and with confidence, in any subject.

Our aim is that all of our students develop their ability to read and have a shared passion and love of reading across the curriculum.

We therefore intend to encourage all pupils to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop: knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live; to establish an appreciation and love of reading; to gain knowledge across the curriculum; and develop their comprehension skills. We are committed to providing vocabulary rich reading material.

Reading Implementation

To enable this to happen, the school needs to be able to assess each individual’s reading level and respond to this to aid further development. This is carried out in a variety of ways.

Baseline Testing

Alongside Progress in reading assessments (PIRA) and Salford reading tests, we use Literacy Assessment Online as a baseline tool for our Year 5 children and to measure the progress of bespoke interventions across the school. The programme is a useful tool for tracking children’s progress and rapidly identifies those pupils who need support. Its various assessments produce standardised scaled score data which provides us with national comparisons, helping to track and target our Key Stage Two children as they work towards their Y6 SATs. The programme also allows us to pinpoint gaps in phonological knowledge, to track and improve the progress of our less able readers and pupils with specific educational needs. Highly motivational user-friendly assessments are structured to enable all to make progress.

Supporting Students with Gaps in Phonics Knowledge

After identifying pupils with gaps in their phonological awareness through the aforementioned Salford reading tests and Literacy Assessment Online we rapidly start pupils on the Read Write Inc programme, developed by Ruth Miskin. Read Write Inc provides a structured and systematic approach to teaching literacy and meets the higher expectations of the National Curriculum. It is used by more than a quarter of the UK’s primary schools and is designed to create fluent readers, confident speakers and willing writers.  Additional, daily Read Write Inc sessions are delivered outside of Literacy lessons to maximise the level of support and progress across Key Stage Two. These are delivered by specialist staff, trained in the programme, who liaise with parents and work alongside English teachers and Support staff; this triangulation ensures children receive the right support in lessons and allows children planned opportunities to practise key words, sounds and spellings to maximise progress. Assessment of phonics skills is frequent and detailed. Children have access to personal decodable readers as well as high interest-low reading age books to encourage reading for pleasure and practise their fluency.

Fluency

Fluency is the foundation for successful reading. At Chantry we aim to give as many students as possible the opportunity to read aloud in lessons daily. In addition to this, we understand the importance of giving our weaker readers more opportunities to read aloud regularly to improve confidence, fluency and comprehension. Students may access this extra support through:

• Individualised KS2 form time paired fluency activities
• Paired reading where possible in lessons and class reader sessions
• Reading Plus sessions to practice silent fluency skills
• Parent/carer reading volunteer sessions (pre and post covid)
• Years 5/7 and Years 6/8 paired reading sessions  (pre and post covid)
• Years 7 and 8 reading groups  (pre and post covid)

Children in Key Stage Two should be heard reading aloud at least once a week; those working below age-related expectations in both key stages should be heard every day. Children are given the opportunity to develop their skills in 5 areas:

• Expression and volume
• Phrasing
• Smoothness
• Pace
• Accuracy (aiming for 95%)

Whole School Approach to Fluency

• Common approach to listening to children read here
• Highlight important chunks of text
• Use of Choral reading – pupils in unison can confidently practice appropriate pace and intonation
• Use of Echo reading – teacher expertly models reading a short passage; pupil (focus on below ARE) echoes same passage
• Segmenting sentences – focus on one to one modelling of punctuation reading and phrases read as a unit
• Paired peer Reading (and form time paired reading fluency tracking sheet here)

Reading Plus Lessons

All students have a timetabled lesson in an ICT room with the focus of the lesson being solely to develop reading skills. Reading Plus is an adaptive online literacy intervention which assesses children’s reading efficiency whilst also measuring and increasing motivation, fluency, comprehension and stamina. Students are given choice and control to practice at their own pace. It is also the expectation that students will spend at least 30 minutes on the programme for homework in order to make the highest possible gains and become successful, confident readers by the end of Key Stage Two. For students who need extra support accessing the programme we have additional timetabled lunchtime slots in an ICT suite led by teachers.

Class Readers/Storytime

To further enhance our students’ reading curriculum further, we have selected a range of fiction, non-fiction, rich and diverse texts that form tutors can read for pleasure with their classes; these will be enjoyed during one timetabled lesson and two additional afternoon registrations per week. Class readers sessions are teacher-led, where the teacher demonstrates reading at a fast, fluent pace, modelling intonation and expression. The teacher also informs children of the author’s intent and purpose at carefully selected points throughout the text, without too much disruption to  the flow of the story. A selection of the texts that our students will read during their time at Chantry can be seen here:

Whole School Approach to Reading Texts

• Texts will always be read aloud by staff with/before students to allow for all reading abilities to gain understanding.
• Children will then be able to re-read texts aloud in pairs to develop fluency.
• Staff will explicitly model a range of reading strategies vai ‘‘read aloud/think alouds’ (examples here) to check for understanding.
• Staff and children will demonstrate using each of the 7 strategies below in order:

• Access background knowledge and connect to the text
• Predict and ask questions
• Visualise
• Think like a detective (look for clues)
• Breakdown and repair (Clarify)
• Underline Key (VIP) words and phrases Question
• Summarise and build gist

Reading Curriculum

At Chantry we pride ourselves on giving our students a broad and balanced curriculum in which students will explore a range of reading material to challenge and support them on their journey to becoming educated and empathetic human beings. An example of what our reading curriculum looks like in English is here

Supporting Reading at Home

We are passionate about working with parents to support our pupils to become fluent, motivated readers. Support is structured by sharing comprehensive instructional materials regularly with parents, offering support and guidance on promoting reading for pleasure; book and author events; reading skills and strategies and our reading curriculum. Such support is shared through our website, parentmail and additional parent evenings as listed below:

• Year 5 ‘How to support your child’ evening in October
• Year 6 ‘SAT information’ evening in January
• Key Stage Two and Three suggested  book lists
• Reading Plus parents guide
• Knowledge organisers identifying topics to promote additional research and pre-reading
• Website resources
• Celebrations and rewards such as postcards, reading certificates and English student of the fortnight letters are regularly sent home

Impact

Reading overview

At Chantry, our children are familiar with and enjoy listening to a wide range of stories, poems and non-fiction. We are dedicated to reach our goal: for all children – even our weakest readers – to reach age-related expectations. Below are some of the ways we support this vision..