Reading
Reading Intent The Love of Reading |
At Shenley Primary, School we are passionate about Reading; the teaching of Reading takes a high priority within the curriculum. Our aim is to ensure children can read well, as this key factor can significantly impact on success in school and beyond. Reading transports children to an imagined world far beyond their own experiences. We want our children to develop a 'love' of reading and take full advantage of the pleasure it offers. We aim to develop a positive attitude towards reading so that each child sees themselves as a reader. We have developed our reading corners to draw children in, to want to read and experience this in a place of safety and inspiration. In 2020 we re-designed and installed a brand new library. |
At Shenley, all children in Early Years and Key Stage 1 use the Read Write Inc Phonics Programme. In Read Write Inc. Phonics lessons, children learn to read accurately and fluently with comprehension. They learn to form each letter, spell correctly and compose their ideas step-by-step.
Throughout the programme, children learn the English alphabetic code: the 150+ graphemes that represent 44 speech sounds. They rapidly learn sounds and the letter, or groups of letters they need to represent them, in three sets of Speed Sounds Lessons. Simple and enjoyable mnemonics help all children to grasp the letter-sound correspondences quickly, especially those who are at risk of making slower progress or those who are new to learning English. This knowledge is taught and consolidated daily. High frequency words that are not phonically regular are taught as 'tricky' words (we call them Red Words) and are practised frequently.
Phonics books are closely matched to children's increasing knowledge of phonics and 'tricky' words so that, early on, they experience plenty of success. Repeated readings of the texts support their increasingly fluent decoding.
We aim to improve pupils’ vocabulary and reading through the explicit teaching of skills to ALL pupils daily. This is done through whole class teaching, using the sequence of skills from the National Curriculum for each year group, and appropriate texts matched to pupils’ ability and interests, and to engage pupils and develop a depth of understanding. Phonics knowledge, decoding and oral comprehension is tracked half-termly against a series of checkpoints. Those children not meeting expectations are included in a variety of intervention groups to boost their skills. These interventions include Early Morning Readers, the Fluency Project and others embedding the Read Write Inc phonics programme, tailored to meet the needs of individual children.
Fresh Start
Fresh Start is a fast track intervention that provides support for pupils in Year 5 and 6 who need additional support in their reading. The programme teaches children at their challenge point so they learn accurately and fluently - quickly. Fresh Start also supports learners to spell correctly whilst using the correct punctuation.
Reading Vipers
At Shenley, we use VIPERS as a method of ensuring that teachers ask, and students are familiar with, a range of questions. VIPERS is an anagram to support the recall of the 6 reading domains as part of the UK’s reading curriculum. They are the key areas, which children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts. VIPERS stands for: Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval, Sequence or Summarise. The 6 domains focus on the comprehension aspect of reading and not the mechanics: decoding, fluency, prosody etc. They allow the teacher to track the type of questions asked and the children’s responses to these, which allows for targeted questioning afterwards. VIPERS is taught as a whole class guided reading session daily.