Reading at St Thomas'
Intent - Our vision for Reading
At St Thomas’ CE Primary we want all children to develop an appreciation and lifelong love of reading during their time at our school. We believe that all pupils should have the opportunity to become fluent, confident readers who are able to successfully engage with, and understand a wide range of texts across the whole curriculum.
Our curriculum is designed so that alongside reading for pleasure, children develop the ability to use their reading skills to research and gather new knowledge and understanding about themselves and the world around them.
By the time our children leave us to take their next steps in to their world, we want them to read fluently and with confidence across all genres so that they are fully prepared to successfully deal with the challenges presented at the next stage in their education.
Implementation - How we plan for, and teach Reading
We follow Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised and have daily phonics lessons in Nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 2.
We teach phonics for 20-30 minutes a day. In Reception, we build up the amount of time children spend learning phonics as quickly as possible, and also use daily listening games to promote communication and language skills.
Each Friday, we review the week’s teaching to help children become fluent readers.
Children in Reception are taught to read and spell words using Phase 2 and 3 GPCs, and words with adjacent consonants (Phase 4) with fluency and accuracy. Children in Year 1 review Phase 3 and 4 and are taught to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.
Daily Keep-up lessons
Keep-up lessons ensure every child learns to read. Any child who needs additional practice has daily keep-up support, taught by a fully trained adult. Keep-up lessons match the structure of class teaching. They use the same procedures and resources but in smaller steps with more repetition, so that every child secures their learning.
We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessment to identify the gaps in phonic knowledge and teach to these using the keep-up resources – at pace. If any child in Year 3 to 6 has gaps in their phonic knowledge when reading or writing, we plan phonics ‘catch-up’ lessons to address specific reading/writing gaps.
Reading at school
We use books carefully matched to the children’s secure phonic knowledge using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which are monitored by the class teacher, who works with groups of readers on a regular basis. These books are from Big Cat Collins and are matched directly to the sounds children know.
The DfE states that children should be reading 'decodable' books which means that they are not encountering phonics that they have not already learned when they read. This means that their strategies (segmenting sounds they know and blending them to form a word) can always work. Each reading practice session has a clear focus, so that the demands of the session do not overload the children’s cognitive memory. The reading practice sessions have been designed to focus on three key reading skills: decoding, prosody (teaching children to read with understanding and expression) and comprehension (teaching children to understand the text).
In Reception these sessions start no later than Week 3. Children who are not yet decoding have daily additional blending practice in small groups, so that they quickly learn to blend and can begin to read books.
Reading at home
The decodable reading practice book is provided for the children to access at home so they can practise with their family. We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised resources to engage our families and share information about phonics, the benefits of sharing books, how children learn to blend and other aspects of our provision. We share teacher videos and hold parent workshops to keep parents up to date with our phonics programme. Children in Reception and Year 1 who are receiving additional phonics keep-up sessions read their reading book to an adult daily.
‘Here’s how many words kids would have heard by the time they were 5 years old: Never read to, 4,662 words; 1–2 times per week, 63,570 words; 3–5 times per week, 169,520 words; daily, 296,660 words; and five books a day, 1,483,300 words’.
(Science Daily 2019)
Progression and consistency
Every teacher and teaching assistant teaching using Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised in our school has been trained, so we have the same expectations of our children. We all use the same language, routines and resources to teach children to read so that we lower children’s cognitive load. Lesson templates, prompt cards and ‘how to’ videos from Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised ensure teachers all have a consistent approach and structure for each lesson.
The Phonics lead and SLT regularly observe and monitor teaching; they use the summative data to identify children who need additional support and identify any gaps in learning.
Whole class reading in Years 3 – 6
As the children move into Key Stage 2, discreet reading lessons take the form of ‘Whole Class Reading’. During these sessions, pupils develop reading skills as a whole class. They are built around the teacher reading high-quality and challenging texts, which are dissected by the class through high-level questioning and discussion. The sessions include a range of activities – not all of which have a written outcome – that enable pupils to develop their vocabulary and comprehension skills. Children may also be encouraged to develop their fluency through reading short sections to a partner or echoing expressions modelled by the teacher.
Ensuring reading for pleasure
‘We found significant evidence that reading is linked to important developmental factors in children, improving their cognition, mental health, and brain structure, which are cornerstones for future learning and well-being’
(Barbara Sahakian, 2023)
Children cannot be highly engaged in books if they struggle to read words, which is why it is so important that books are matched appropriately for our children. We value reading for pleasure highly.
Throughout our school, we read quality books to children every day. We choose these books carefully as we want children to experience a wide range of books. Books that are mirrors, reflecting the children at St Thomas CE Primary and our local community, and books that are windows into the other worlds and cultures that make up our wonderfully diverse world.
At St Thomas’, we have strong connections with our local library. The librarian comes regularly to read to our nursery children, and children in classes from Reception to Year 2 will visit the library a number of times over the course of the year. Children from Years 3 - 6 visit the library once a month to read or to change their books.
In Nursery and Reception, children have access to the reading corner every day in their continuous provision time, both indoors and outdoors and the books are continually refreshed, influenced by the interests of the children and the focus topic. Reception children also have ‘secret readers’ which further excites them and has them eagerly awaiting the stories their visitors will read!
Children from Reception onwards have home reading records to encourage reading at home. The parent/carer records comments to share with the adults in school and the adults will write in this on a regular basis to ensure communication between home and school.
Our well stocked school library is available for classes to use when they need to change their books. Books are purchased every 6-8 weeks, based on the recommendations of children in school. This is kindly supported by our generous PTFA.
In addition to the school library, each class has a reading area within the classroom which has been carefully curated by the teacher, and which will reflect the interests and ability levels of the children in the class.
St Thomas’ works hard to encourage reading for pleasure by welcoming visitors to the school, celebrating ‘Book Week’, organising book fairs and promoting Warrington’s ‘Summer Reading Challenge’, which we have won every year for the past 8 years! We are also fortunate to have excellent support from our church community and welcome a number of volunteers from church who hear the children read on a weekly basis.
Supporting pupils to catch up
Children who have fallen behind in reading are supported through daily reading to an adult, and through group or individual intervention sessions.
Impact - How we evaluate learning in Reading
Assessment in Early Reading
Assessment is used to monitor progress and to identify any child needing additional support as soon as they need it.
Assessment for learning is used during every lesson to identify children needing support and weekly in the Review lesson to assess gaps, address these immediately and secure fluency of GPCs, words and spellings.
Summative assessment is used every half term to assess progress, to identify gaps in learning that need to be addressed, to identify any children needing additional support and to plan the Keep-up support that they need. This is assessed through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised.
Data is reviewed by the Phonics lead and SLT to narrow attainment gaps between different groups of children and so that any additional support for teachers can be put into place.
Assessment in Key Stage 2
Teachers use assessment for learning during whole class reading to target support where it is needed. Benchmarking will be used to assess the current needs of children may still be developing their ability to read fluently in order to ensure they are reading books at the correct level.
Assessments will be undertaken in various forms, including talking to pupils and asking questions, discussing pupils’ work with them, listening to children reading individually (where possible) and in group sessions, observation of pupils in discussions, role play situations and in informal settings and observations during whole class reading and writing sessions.
Statutory and summative assessments
Children in Year 1 will complete the Phonics Screening Check. Any child not passing the check will retake the check in Year 2.
Children in Year 2 are no longer required to take part in statutory assessments.
Children in Year 6 will sit the end of Key Stage 2 statutory reading test.
Children from Years 2-5 will be assessed termly using NFER tests to track progress and inform teachers of anyone who may need additional support.