Reading

Reading Curriculum Intent, Implementation & Impact

Intent

At Coleridge, we understand that reading is an essential life skill and we are committed to enabling our children to become lifelong readers. We understand that becoming a proficient reader matters emotionally, culturally and educationally; and, because of the economic impacts within society, it matters to everyone; therefore, reading is at the heart of everything we do at Coleridge.

We have high expectations of all children: together, we aim to achieve excellence every day. Our intent at Coleridge is to ensure that all pupils are fluent and effective readers who have a rich vocabulary, secure comprehension and enjoy reading for pleasure. At the heart of our strategy is our drive to foster a love of reading, enriching children’s learning through carefully designed teaching sequences delivered via high-quality teaching. Each sequence utilises purposefully selected stories and thought-provoking texts that are of a Lexile-appropriate level and become progressively more challenging as children move through school. Reading for pleasure is integral for us: it is our intent that reading for pleasure is a culture, an interwoven golden thread, at the very heart of the school that all children are part of as they journey through school and beyond.

We aim to:

• Build on the work of early reading and phonics by providing ample opportunities for children to apply knowledge of structured synthetic phonics in order to decode unfamiliar words with increasing accuracy and speed;
• Instil a love of reading in children;
• Develop children’s confidence, independence and understanding through fluency, accuracy, automaticity and prosody to read both aloud and to themselves, with different texts and for different purposes;
• Develop a range of evidence-informed reading strategies that allow children to tackle reading problems and the wider curriculum with confidence;
• Develop children’s linguistic knowledge of vocabulary and grammar and how this contributes to reading for meaning;
• Expose children to literature that develops a deeper level of emotional intelligence, critical thinking and empathy; texts and extracts will include diverse themes and be written by diverse authors, both from the present day and the past, and include a broad range of female authors or lead characters to align with our whole school intent and aspirations for our learners.

Implementation

Children must learn to read before they can read to learn. The teaching of early reading and phonics focuses on developing children’s phonetic skills in order to segment and blend to develop fluent readers through the implementation of Read Write Inc. For more information about how we do this at Coleridge, please see our detailed documentation on phonics.

Our curriculum is designed to support children to become fluent readers, recognising words automatically and using appropriate expression and intonation whilst reading at a natural pace. A range of fluency strategies (e.g. guided oral instruction, echo reading, repeated reading, paired reading, speed reading and word and sentence emphasis) are incorporated within high-quality daily reading lessons so that pupils are fluent readers who can both read to learn and read for enjoyment.

Lessons follow a structured 5 day approach to reading activities from the agreed outlined curriculum map. All sessions are interactive and include time for retrieval of previously taught learning, speaking and listening opportunities, fluency practice and comprehension development. Children are taught to notice breakdown in reading – identifying words and phrases they don’t understand and strategies to fix breakdown in meaning. Children are taught to relate the text to themselves, previous reading experiences and the world around them.  Whole class shared reading is used to enable all children to share and respond to high-quality, purposefully-chosen texts from the school’s curriculum map, and develop DERIC reading skills. Teachers use the ‘I do, we do, you do’ model to support children to respond to a range of question types, across the different content domains.  Texts become progressively more challenging in terms of Lexile measure, theme and plot, and are supplemented by poems, non-fiction and short extracts. Where possible, links are made with ‘Coleridge Leads The Way’ so that reading and responses to reading enrich children’s personal development and enhance cultural capital. Additionally, a weekly guided reading session is delivered where teachers use books closely matched to individual need, which enables teachers to elicit the needs of children individually and identify areas for future development. Furthermore, reading skills are continually developed through the wider curriculum. Pre-teaching and scaffolding are integral to the pedagogy of teaching and learning in reading lessons and into the wider curriculum.

Once children complete RWI, we use PM Benchmarking to check and monitor fluency and match children with suitable reading books that provide both challenge and interest. As with the fully decodable books that children read as they progress through phonics, our numbered books that match the Lexile coding used by PM Benchmarking, are books children read with adults, both in school and at home. We support all adults, including grown-ups at home, our own reading buddy pupils and volunteers who come into school to be able to support children to read these books using specific strategies. Children work through the wide variety of books at their own pace, recording their reading in their diaries. Teachers monitor their progress and determine, in conjunction with the use of ongoing assessment, when best for children to move onto the next level, ensuring that a range of books have been explored and understood.

From the moment children step foot into school, they are immersed in a text-rich environment, with well-stocked and accessible book areas in every classroom and throughout shared spaces in school. The ‘lend-it library’, ‘reading shed’ and the ‘secret library’ offer children additional opportunities to explore books to enjoy – which children are encouraged to do so independently and with their peers, alongside their reading book. These, combined with every adult sharing a love of reading, encourage a positive culture of reading for pleasure throughout school. Research shows hearing books read aloud supports children and children at Coleridge enjoy listening to challenging texts through daily storytime, during daily whole class reading sessions and through our half-termly event ‘Authors Galore’ which sees children exercise their right to a democratic vote about the author they would like to explore.  In addition to this, we have a trained team of ‘reading buddies’ who take great pride in their responsibilities of sharing stories and books on the playground as well as pairing up with younger children to support and encourage them with reading.

Impact

At Coleridge, we strive to make sure every child fulfils their potential by making at least good progress from their starting points, taking account of their individual learning needs, so that they are able to read with accuracy, confidence, fluency, understanding and are therefore ready to access the secondary school curriculum at an age-appropriate level by the time they leave Year 6. Furthermore, pupils will develop a life-long enjoyment of reading, books and other reading material, across a range of genres, cultures and styles. Although every child is different and will be successful in different areas, our knowledge progression document outlines what we aim to ensure children will achieve, in line with the expectations of the National Curriculum 2014.

In addition to this:

• Families will have a good understanding of how they can support reading at home.
• There will be no significant gaps in the progress of different groups of pupils (e.g. disadvantaged vs non-disadvantaged)