English - Reading

Intent

At Bosley St Mary’s CE Primary School our aim is for every child to become a fluent, confident and enthusiastic reader. We want to ensure children meet their age-related expectations and additionally we want children to develop a love for reading and encourage reading for pleasure on a regular basis.

Our curriculum is designed around the needs of the pupils in our school and there are a variety of approaches to enable the pupils to make good progress.

The aims of teaching reading in our school are to develop pupils who:

•  show high levels of achievement and exhibit very positive attitudes towards reading;
• rapidly acquire a secure knowledge of letters and sounds and make sustained progress in learning to read fluently;
• read easily and fluently with good understanding across both fiction and non-fiction;
• acquire a wider vocabulary;
• participate in the teaching of phonics knowledge, skills and understanding in a systematic and enjoyable way;
• develop their reading in all subjects to support their acquisition of knowledge;
• develop a love of reading;
• read for pleasure both at home and school on a regular basis;
• through their reading develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually;
• develop good comprehension drawing from their linguistic knowledge.

Implementation

Phonics
Our school follows the Read, Write Inc phonics program from Foundation Stage and throughout Key Stage One. All children complete a baseline assessment in phonics and are then grouped accordingly by their teachers. Phonics sessions take place daily and last for approximately 20 minutes. Children move to different classrooms and learning areas for phonics and all staff including TA’s are responsible for a group.

When planning teachers have access to handbooks and online resources. Where a TA leads a group a designated teacher will be responsible for the planning, preparation and assessment of that group.

Regular assessments are carried out by both teachers and TA’s and the groups are changed accordingly.

Whole Class Reading

Due to the nature of our classes, we have adopted a Whole Class Guided Reading approach called VIPERS.

What are Vipers?

VIPERS is an acronym to aid the recall of the 6 reading domains which form the reading curriculum.  They are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts.

VIPERS stands for:

The 6 domains focus on the comprehension aspect of reading and not the mechanics: decoding, fluency, prosody etc.  As such, VIPERS is not a reading scheme but rather a method of ensuring that teachers ask, and students are familiar with, a range of questions.  They allow the teacher to track the type of questions asked and the children’s responses to these which allows for targeted questioning afterwards.

Children practise VIPERS in both Willow and Oak Class. Often VIPERS sessions start from Spring Term in Willow Class. Teachers follow the below process when teaching VIPERS:

Day 1 - Children are introduced to a short piece of text, this may be from their class text or from a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction. Teachers choose texts which link to what the children are currently studying in class to ensure maximum engagement. The teacher model reads the text to the children on Day 1. This allows children to hear how the text should be read. Children then complete an 'I think, I wonder' chart which allows plenty of time for book talk. During this time they are encouraged to make text to self links, text to text links and text to world links. Once they have completed this activity, they then begin answering VIPERS questions which will have been carefully planned by the teacher. Every session includes a V (vocabulary question) and one or two other IPERS questions. 

Day 2 - On Day 2, children revisit the text. This time, the whole class takes part in an Echo Read. An echo read involves the children reciting short sections from the text after the teacher. All children read at the same time and are expected to echo how the teacher reads. Once they have completed an Echo Read they then move on to answer more VIPERS questions.

Day 3 - On Day 3, children revisit the text for the final time in the week. They also take part in a Choral Read where the class read a section from the text in unison. Reading together in this way promotes fluency, self-confidence and motivation especially for those who may feel self-conscious when reading aloud as they have a built-in support network when taking part in activties such as echo and choral reading. After the choral read, children complete their final VIPERS questions for the week. 

Each VIPERS session lasts for 30 minutes.

Reading and Assessment

When children first become readers they have access to our Accelerated Reader Programme. Children complete half-termly reading assessments known as Star Reader quizzes. From this quiz, Accelerated Reader creates an individual diagnostic which places children on a certain level on the Accelerated Reader scale. The reports also produce a ZPD (zone of proximal development score). The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) defines the readability range within which pupils should read to best develop their reading, while avoiding frustration. Teachers are also able to see the childs reading age once they have completed a Star Reader quiz and this helps teachers to group their pupils into Guided Reading groups.

Every child will read with a teacher once during a week. This will happen during a group, guided reading session. 

Reading for pleasure

Reading for pleasure is at the heart of our English curriculum at Bosley. Since the introduction of our new English curriculum, The Literary Curriculum, we have focused on using high quality, engaging and inspirational texts. Our curriculum is based on teaching from a text and therefore our children are constantly immersed in quality literature. 

In each classroom, there is a dedicated reading area. These areas are comfortable and special for the children with a range of texts made available include fiction and non-fiction.

Author time takes place everyday, either at the of the day or after lunch. This is time dedicated to reading aloud from a book the children have voted for. Furthermore, each teacher selects a theme every half-term to focus on and ensures a range of books are available based on this theme for the children to explore.

We are also very lucky to have access to our local educational library service. Teachers ensure they have a wide range of books and items ordered from the ELA so children have access to these throughout topics studied. 

Impact

Reading in our school is progressive and planned to meet the needs of all children. Assessments are carried out regularly to ensure children are accessing books of the right level and are being challenged in their reading. At the same time we provide books to ensure that children read for pleasure and learn to love reading.

If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making expected or more than expected progress. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Phonics assessment;
• Phonics screening results;
• ZPD score - assessed through Accelerated Reader;
• Summative assessments each term;
• End of Key stage SATs results.