Reading
Our Reading Curriculum Intent
We strive to adopt a love of reading at school and at home. We believe reading is an entitlement that should enable children to connect with stories, vocabulary and it should open up a world of possibility and intrigue. Reading is a fundamental life skill which, enables children to communicate effectively in all areas and equips them for the challenges they will face in the wider world.
We aim to have pupils leave Georgeham School as lifelong readers, who have an instilled love for reading.
We ensure a clear progression in reading across the school by ensuring our progression documents are used to inform planning and support for all pupils, and by monitoring this strategy regularly. We support our weaker readers and help to close the gap by pre-teaching our active reading scheme, including 1:1 reading each day/week with the lower 20% of readers.
Our reading curriculum: Universal provision
Our Active Reading strategy is developed in line with the latest research reviews from Ofsted, the DfE and the Educational Endowment Fund. This strategy incorporates aspects of oracy, quality discussion, vocabulary acquisition and deeper engagement with chosen texts. Reading material selected for these lessons is used in pre-teaching interventions for our lowest 20% of pupils. Reading material is also chosen to support the acquisition of subject specific vocabulary, knowledge and skills.
Daily lessons have a specific focus:
- Monday: Echo reading and vocabulary acquisition
- Tuesday: Retrieval activities
- Wednesday: Summary skills
- Thursday: Developing skills of inference and analysis of authorial choice
- Friday: Summative assessment to identify pupils who require additional support.
The same reading text is used all week, in order to enable children to revisit key knowledge and vocabulary and to develop more complex reading skills.
Our reading curriculum: Targeted provision
We have three key strategies to ensure pupils at risk of falling behind are quickly identified and supported to make rapid catch up:
- Pre-teaching sessions every Friday afternoon
- Reading fluency interventions for lowest 20%
- Early morning reading on 1:1 basis for selected pupils
Reading for pleasure
We have class library stocked with inspiring texts and we encourage reading for pleasure every day. We also have class books being read and shared in classes 3 and 4, which helps encourage a love for reading and storytelling.
We have a well-planned rolling 2-year programme with planned and relevant texts being taught in all classes. They are exposed to a rich, wide variety of high quality fiction, including poetry, culturally diverse books/content/authors, classical fiction and rich, lyrical prose.