Reading

In St. Anselm's, we want to not only inspire children through books but also to promote a love of reading to empower our children to become lifelong readers.  Books should not be seen as a chore but as a gateway to other worlds, the opening of our imaginations.  We believe that reading is a life skill that every child should be entitled to have.

Reading is an integral part of the school curriculum and a fundamental life skill that impacts on all areas of learning.  We aim to equip our pupils with the knowledge and skills needed to:

• Read a range of texts across the curriculum to support their acquisition of knowledge
• Enjoy a wide variety of texts and recommend these to others, expressing preferences by giving reasons for these
• Read words accurately and fluently, applying age-appropriate knowledge of phonics, common exception words, root words, prefixes and suffixes
• Understand a wide range of vocabulary across the curriculum
• Make comparisons within and across books and to ask questions to clarify understanding
• Draw inferences from texts read and to justify these with evidence
• Summarise the key ideas about a text and participate in discussion about the range of texts studied
• Distinguish between fact and opinion and provide reasoned justification for their views

In EYFS and KS1, we focus on developing our children's decoding skills through our chosen systematic, synthetic phonics scheme, Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised.  Without the ability to read and decode text, so much is closed off to a child and later on as an adult.

In Years 3-6, we use the VIPERS question stems to explicitly teach children the skills they need to develop their reading comprehension.  This is to ensure that all children have the necessary skills to access the reading and vocabulary demands of the secondary curriculum and beyond.

Reading is a key skill that enables your child to access the whole curriculum.  Every day in school we ask your children to read in various contexts, for example, to follow instructions, solve problems, research or read for pleasure.  In addition, we hear your children read during reading sessions and on an individual basis as appropriate.  

Whole Class Reading Lesson Structure

During a typical session the teacher will share what the content domain/s the children will be focusing on for that session. Teachers carefully select up to 4 key vocabulary words they want the children to learn that week.  These will be taught, over learnt and embedded throughout the rest of the week during VIPER sessions and across the wider school day to allow for children to use these words in different contexts.  Where appropriate they are applied during literacy sessions.   

Children read during these sessions in a variety of different ways.  They may hear the teacher model fluent reading and then have time to reread the same extract themselves,  they may read individually and feedback, work in groups, take turns in pairs or read aloud to their peers.  You may see a number of these different strategies during one session.

Teachers plan 3 key questions each session based on the content domain being focused on.  Children are encouraged to orally speak the answer before writing anything down acknowledging their first answer may not always be their best.  We use a maximum of 3 question each session to ensure children have time to provide quality answers.  At times children are given sentence stems and vocabulary that is expected to be used within their answer.

Children are encouraged to provide evidence for their answer based on a text extract or a picture they have seen in the book.  Where appropriate children are encouraged to use evidence from a range of different places within the text.

Recording and Assessment during VIPERS sessions

We encourage children to orally talk through their answers and ensure it is the best they can give before writing anything down.  We also acknowledge it is good for children to also be able to formally record an answer.  Children can do this in a variety of different ways such as discussing the answer first with peers and/or an adult and then writing their best answer, working individually and then editing their answer accordingly after discussion or orally discussing 1 or 2 of the questions and writing down the others working individually.

During this reading session teachers focus on specific children during the session, this may mean hearing them read individually whilst others are reading independently, in pairs or groups, discussing answers with those children and working one to one or within a group with them during a session whilst the others form an answer independently.  Teachers can then assess these children based on NC expectations and how they are performing relating to the specific content domain.

 Recommended Reading Websites