VISION -Being a Reader at Lyppard Grange Primary School

At Lyppard Grange Primary School we place English at the heart of our curriculum. We strive to offer children a high-quality, English-rich learning environment, which will enable children to develop the skills they need to become life-long learners, readers and communicators, thus empowering them to be secure, engaged and equipped for life. Our vision is that we want children to leave our school being able to read fluently, with understanding, confidence and enjoyment, and become enthusiastic and critical readers of a wide range of texts, including stories, poetry and drama as well as non-fiction and mixed-media texts.

INTENT 

At LGPS we want children to achieve the following and believe we have designed a robust, engaging and challenging reading curriculum which allows them to do this.

• Develop a positive attitude towards books and reading
• Learn phonemic awareness and knowledge as well as word recognition and graphic knowledge
• Share in a variety of texts, including fiction, non-fiction and poetry and understand their structures
• Learn the skills of skimming, scanning and note taking to retrieve information from a variety of sources and to be able to summarise that information
• Develop as readers by reading texts of increasing complexity with more independence
• Learn to interrogate and respond to texts to form judgements about the relevance of the material
• Be able to read easily, fluently and with good understanding
• Develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
• Acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
• Learn how to appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
• Elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas and justify their viewpoints
• Use and develop a range of learning values: independence, communication, perseverance, curiosity, teamwork, courage and adaptability by offering breadth and variety in their learning opportunities

IMPLEMENTATION 

Curriculum design

Long term planning

The National Curriculum for English 2014 and Early Years Foundation Stage guidance provide the long-term planning for English taught across the school. These objectives have been amended to reflect our own expectations for reading at Lyppard Grange and are detailed on our tracking system, Insight. 

Medium term planning

Wherever possible, all themes are based around or inspired by a high-quality text, which is shared with the class throughout the theme. However, if a quality text cannot be sourced for a specific theme, then a different quality text is chosen which may not match the theme, but will provide the appropriate reading diet.

Lesson design

Each class teacher is responsible for the reading in their class, in consultation with and with guidance from the English subject leader. Children are taught reading skills in a variety of ways and are given many opportunities to read throughout the day, including choral reading to build fluency. 

In EYFS and Year 1, teacher-led guided reading activities teach children specific skills in small groups and in addition, areas of continuous provision within the classroom support reading. Children are able to access these throughout the day to practise and develop skills which have been taught. This continues into the first half of autumn term in Year 2 before children transition to Whole Class Reading.

Whole Class Reading 

Each unit begins with reading for understanding, where texts are displayed on the board and read through as a class. Children are not passively listening during these sessions, but rather are ‘active’ the whole time, asking lots of questions to deepen their understanding of the text. Appropriate questions will be modelled to ensure this happens. Adults also model appropriate expression, intonation and fluency when reading aloud. The next stage is line by line reading, where texts are once more displayed on the board, but this time line by line/a section at a time. Sessions are all carefully planned against reading objectives to allow teachers to ask searching questions related to the lesson focus which will further children’s understanding. The text is revealed a section at a time, read through and a question asked, which may then lead to subsequent questions. The third read through is known as leapfrog reading, where the focus is on the specific objective you want children to achieve, following a character, image, idea or language structure through the text. Some parts are leapt over and others are paused at and examined more closely. This is often linked to the follow-up activity and provides an opportunity to model the task. Texts used within whole class reading sessions are chosen based on age, stage and objectives and are often, but not always, liked to the theme being covered.

IMPACT 

As we believe that reading is the vehicle which drives teaching and learning in all other areas, the impact of our reading curriculum goes beyond the result of statutory assessments. Children have the opportunity to enter the wide and varied magical worlds that reading opens up to them. As they develop their own interest in books, a deep love of literature across a range of genres, cultures and styles is enhanced.

Through the teaching of systematic phonics and reading enquiry, our aim is for children to become fluent and confident readers, who can apply their knowledge, skills and experience to the range of texts they will encounter through the Key Stage 2 curriculum and beyond.

In addition to this:

• Parents and carers will have a good understanding of how they can support reading at home, and contribute regularly to home-school records.
• The % of pupils working at age-related expectations and above age-related expectations within each year group will be at least in line with national averages and will match the ambitious targets of individual children.
• There will be no significant gaps in the progress of different groups of pupils (e.g. disadvantaged vs non-disadvantaged)