Reading
If you are a dreamer come in
If you are a dreamer a wisher a liar
A hoper a pray-er a magic-bean-buyer
If you're a pretender come sit by my fire
For we have some flax golden tales to spin
Come in!
Come in!Shel Silverstein
At Boddington Primary Academy we believe that a quality English curriculum should develop children’s love of reading and ensure they progress to the best of their ability.
Why Do We Teach and Nurture Reading?
Reading is fundamental to achieving lifelong success and pleasure in life and as such, is core in our vision to ‘Respect, Believe, Succeed’. We passionately believe in developing a culture that encourages a desire and love for reading. We are determined that all of our children leave Boddington Academy with the ability to read fluently and comprehensively. We recognise the importance that phonics plays in ensuring this goal is achieved. Our commitment to this approach underpins all of our teaching throughout KS1 and KS2 and forms the bedrock of our intervention programmes, when needed. Progress in phonics is crucial from the very start of children’s literacy journey in the Early Years throughout KS1, ensured through effective teaching and resources. We provide children with rich reading opportunities throughout their school literary experience and these texts build cumulatively upon their phonics knowledge throughout their time in schools.
How Do We Teach and Nurture Reading?
At Boddington, we know that our pupil’s progress in phonics relies heavily on our effective and frequent formative and summative appraisals. Our assessment is detailed and quickly allows us to identify any pupil who needs additional support. With this quick identification, we can then support those children to help them make more rapid progress.
By using phonics daily as our reading approach from Reception and across all classes and interventions, we ensure consistency from one year to the next in terms of our pedagogical language but also in our approach to helping children learn to read. Our home reading books for EYFS and KS1 are carefully curated so that pupils have plenty of practice reading books, which match with their current phonics knowledge. When children become free choice readers, we support them with 2 books selections; one is a reading for pleasure book and one is a reading book pitched appropriately to their reading level.
To find out more, read our Reading at Boddington Presentation to Parents February 2023
Key Information for Parents about learning to read
We ensure that our children are immersed in quality texts, with class readers suitable pitched to offer challenge and read aloud by enthusiastic story tellers, within the classroom, creating the mystery and tension that only a good story can!
These class readers are not only a rich source of vocabulary but also reflect diversity and are chosen to address the needs of the specific cohorts. Texts in EYFS are often repeated to allow children to build up fluency and develop an understanding of the vocabulary across a range of genres, often interwoven with the curriculum topic. By reading aloud stories, poems, rhymes and non-fiction and by looking carefully at more unfamiliar or specific vocabulary (tier 2 and tier 3) within these books, we develop pupils' vocabulary, language comprehension and inspire within them a love of reading.
Within the school day, children are given multiple opportunities to read, as developing fluency, once phonics knowledge is secure, is a key element in order to develop strong reading comprehension.
Daily reading lessons focus on practicing fluency, developing understanding of vocabulary and reviewing children’s understanding of what they have read by asking provoking questions and teaching different reading skills such as predicting character’s behaviours and summarizing chapters.
We, as staff, promote a love for reading by leading by example. We have recommended reads for children who are free choice readers and as a staff, we share our experiences and enjoyment of texts that we have read. We can confidently help children to choose books, based on their interests and that will keep them engaged. Children are actively encouraged to talk about the books that they are reading and share their enthusiasm with their peers.
We support our parents in teaching reading at home with parents phonic sessions for Reception parents and share reading tips and suggestions throughout the year for our older children. We also host training sessions for our reading volunteers, ensure that parental support in school follows our whole school reading approach.
We have a dedicated section on our newsletter which informs parents of book recommendations and run regular book fayres, both virtual and in-school to support parent’s reading at home with their children.
Reading is not only celebrated in classrooms at Boddington Academy but also around our school and throughout the year. We have welcomed authors into our classroom and onto a zoom screen, offering our thoughts to authors before they publish as well as published authors, held a World Book Day whole school event virtually with staff readers, reading den competitions as well as offering book vouchers for prizes in other competitions.
Please click on the links below to explore the other areas of English
What Does English Look Like at Boddington Primary Academy?
With the systematic teaching of phonics in place, we aim for all of our children to become phonically confident readers by the end of key stage 1 and to leave key stage two with developed fluency and good comprehension. We carry out regular formative reading assessments and termly assessments are collated to assess progress over time. This ensures children are quickly identified, if extra support is needed. All children in Year one do the statutory phonics test. Those in year 2 and 6 partake in the reading SATs. These results are then measured against national averages.
Our biggest hope in terms of impact however, goes far beyond assessment results. We firmly believe that our reading curriculum develops the love of reading in all children. It gives them the opportunity to become immersed in another world and experience the magic of story-telling. We hope the impact of our reading curriculum is evident to all from the moment you walk in the door and speak to our children.
Reading at Boddington
