Reading Curriculum Statement
"Learning to read is a priority. From Nursery, children begin to learn phonics. Daily lessons in Reception and Year 1 ensure pupils quickly gain the knowledge and skills they need to become readers. Staff quickly identify pupils who are struggling and give additional help so that they do not fall behind. Staff and parents hear pupils read very regularly, which helps them practise and improve their reading fluency. Pupils enjoy hearing the books which staff read to them and this helps them develop knowledge of literature and a love of reading. Reading does not stop in class, and pupils often choose to read at playtimes in the ‘reading realm’ or at book club". OFSTED October 2023
Intent
At Clee Hill Community Academy, we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers .We value reading as a crucial life skill. By the time children leave us, they read confidently for meaning and regularly enjoy reading for pleasure. Our readers are equipped with the tools to tackle unfamiliar vocabulary. We encourage our children to see themselves as readers for both pleasure and purpose. Because we believe teaching every child to read is so important, we have a Reading Leader who drives the early reading programme in our school, Donna Richardson.
Donna is highly skilled at teaching phonics and reading, and monitors and
support our reading team, so everyone teaches with fidelity to the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme. etc).
Implementation
We teach Early Reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Nursery/Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school. As a result, all our children are able to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read.
At Clee Hill Community Academy, we also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. We have a strong focus on language development for our children because we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects.
Reading in the EYFS
Nursery
We provide a balance of child-led and adult-led experiences for all children that meet the curriculum expectations for ‘Communication and language’ and
‘Literacy’. These include:
o sharing high-quality stories and poems
o learning a range of nursery rhymes and action rhymes
o activities that develop focused listening and attention, including oral blending
o attention to high-quality language.
We ensure Nursery children are well prepared to begin learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending in Reception.
Reception
We teach phonics for 30 minutes a day. In Reception, we build from 10-minute lessons, with additional daily oral blending games, to the full-length lesson as quickly as possible. Each Friday, we review the week’s teaching to help children become fluent readers.
• Children make a strong start in Reception: teaching begins in Week 2 of the Autumn term.
• We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised expectations of progress:
o 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.
o 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.
Our Early Years Curriculum
As part of our EYFS curriculum, there are milestones which have been carefully constructed with an end goal, to reflect our own dynamics and environment to meet our children’s needs, whilst ensuring a stimulating, challenging and diverse curriculum. Although many aspects of the Early Years Curriculum develop a solid understanding for Reading and Phonics in Year 1, 'A Happy Chatter and Confident Communicator' and 'A Brilliant Bookworm' are both of particular importance to show the progression of learning through Nursery and Reception.
EYFS Curriculum milestones and goals
Supporting children with their reading
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, and use the same procedures, resources and mantras, but in smaller steps with more repetition, so that every child secures their learning.
• We timetable daily phonics lessons for any child in Year 2 or 3 who is not fully fluent at reading or has not passed the Phonics Screening Check. These children urgently need to catch up, so the gap between themselves and their peers does not widen. We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments to identify the gaps in their 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. These short, sharp lessons last 10 minutes and take place at least three times a week.
Supporting pupils with additional needs
Children with special educational needs will need the same body of knowledge to read just as their peers will. Any pupils that are not at the point of being able to read words accurately, need to be taught phonics. Broadly speaking, it will only be those that have got severe cognitive difficulties that are not able to be taught phonics code however these children are still on that same curriculum journey, but they're at a much earlier stage.
It may be that teachers need to think about the choice of activities and resources to teach that same grapheme phoneme correspondence knowledge. It's likely that these pupils might need to be taught in smaller groups and free from distractions. There's undoubtedly going to need to be a lot more repetition and over learning to develop fluency and it could be the resources needed adapting so that the more age appropriate or linked to a child's interests to really engage them.
But the important thing is a curriculum doesn't change, even though the pedagogy might. At Clee Hill we believe in “keep up” not “catch up”.
Reading for meaning
In Class 3 - 5, the children have a whole class reading lessons where they are given the opportunity to explore a variety of quality texts. They develop their comprehension skills through discussion of the text (book talk) and planned follow up comprehension activities, based on the text. These sessions allow for targeted questioning by the teacher and are also used to assess and track individual progress. All children also have access to the school library and a school reading book from the class book corner.
Developing a love of reading
Our reading culture for the school is to provide an environment where reading is celebrated, appreciated and respected, where reading is the bedrock of our curriculum and provides happiness. Our reading treehouse is our library where children and relax and enjoy books, whilst being supported by our
pupil librarians. Each classroom has an engaging and well-planned book corner where children can enjoy reading a range of text, many of which they have been involved in ordered or selecting themselves. Children often 'gift' the school library one of the favourite books on their birthday and can select new books to be added, which are fully funded by the PTA. We even have a book barrow which is wheeled outside at break and lunchtimes for children to read outside in the reading realm.
Impact
All children will leave Clee Hill Community Academy as confident, fluent readers, able to access all areas of the curriculum and fired with a love of reading that will enrich and reward their lives.
They will have been immersed in a rich reading culture that will enable them to become enthusiastic readers and writers who are confident to take risks in their reading and writing, and love to discuss and share their ideas.
Children will be well prepared for National Phonic Testing at the end of Year1, end of year expectations and National Assessment Tests at the end of both key stages.
