Reading

Teaching of reading

At Barkisland, the children begin their journey of learning to read via our Monster Phonics scheme. Children in Nursery explore the difference in sounds which is key to being able to distinguish between phonemes once they reach Reception. Once the children are in Reception, they begin to blend sounds to read words and have the opportunity to practise these sounds through Monster Phonics book with their teachers and take these home to practise. This continues into Year 2 until the children have completed the phonics scheme and are able to progress on to free readers. In addition to a Monster Phonics book, the children are able to take home a library book to share. For more information on Monster Phonics please see our phonics page.

On entry to Key Stage 2 and throughout Years 3, 4, 5 & 6, children have 3 dedicated whole class reading slots a week where they are taught how to develop sophisticated skills of inference and retrieval; build rich vocabularies; and encourage the identification of themes and comparison between texts. During these sessions, there is a heavy focus on developing fluency for reading and understanding modelled by the teacher followed by frequent opportunities for the children to practise fluency whole class, in pairs or individually. We use a scheme called Real Comprehension which is a unique, whole-school reading comprehension programme developed by a company called Plazoom.

The children have access to 54 original fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts by published children's authors – all age appropriate and thematically linked.

Through this scheme, we are able to:

• develop fluency

• build deeper understanding for children of all abilities through a variety of close-reading and guided reading techniques.

•improve pupils' ability to make high-level inferences and links between texts

•extend their vocabulary with focused lessons.

Children in Key Stage 2 have access to class libraries and are able to choose books to read in school or take home to read.

Love of reading

Through our teaching of reading we also nurture a love of reading and extend this to other aspects of reading throughout the week. Children are exposed to a daily story time right across the school where they have the opportunity to escape to other worlds, become involved in the experiences of characters that are similar or very different to themselves and enjoy poems and learn facts from non-fiction texts.

In addition to this, the children have a weekly social reading slot in Years 1-6 (EYFS experience social reading through the areas of provision throughout the day as well as dedicated storytime sessions). This time is a very enjoyable experience for our children as they get to hear teacher recommedations, peer recommendations, share books with their friends in a relaxed environment, bring in reading material from home to share and become exposed to reading materials that they would never have thought of picking up to read!

We also provide opportunities for the children to enjoy some quiet independent reading time across the week.

Reading isn't just for the classroom-we have dedicated outdoor reading areas across the school where children can relax and enjoy selecting a book from our outdoor reading boxes.

Have a read of our spotlight on reading below to find out more about what reading at Barkisland is like.