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.
Phonics and Early Reading
Phonics is taught daily for pupils in Reception and year 1, and in year 2 for catch-up work.
We hold workshops for parents to help our families to become confident in supporting their child with learning Grapheme / Phoneme Correspondence (GPCs), blending confidently and accurately, and developing fluency in reading.
Reading books that are sent home contain GPCs, tricky words and high frequency words that children can confidently recall and blend.
Tracking systems are in place to ensure that children are remembering and applying the GPCs that have been taught during phonics lessons. Our tracking and assessment ensures that children are only moved onto the next book band when they are able to confidently blend and read the tricky words and GPCs within that banding.
AnimaPhonics
AnimaPhonics is a fully synthetic phonics programme which provides high quality resources that follow the sequence of ‘Letters and Sounds Updated’ and can be used at home as well as at school. It follows clear and detailed planning with clear progression from ‘Early Worms’ in Preschool, through to Year 2.
Children are taught phonics in a memorable and magical way and each new sound is introduced through a song or poem with a memorable mnemonic action and animal mascot. This is an important aspect to ensure all children begin their journey with a love for reading.
Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPAG)
Sometimes quite a hot topic for discussion, especially in staffrooms across the country and even more so on the internet and grammar forums, is the area known affectionately as SPAG.
Closely linked to phonics, spelling is an area that’s already been started in school with the blending and segmenting of sounds. This is expanded upon as our children move through the Key Stages with weekly Home Learning tasks covering phonemes, graphemes, decodable and tricky words*, spelling patterns such as prefixes and suffixes and also exception words, such as ‘their’, which doesn’t follow the ‘i before e’ rule. Some of the time, our children won’t be tested on the exact list of words they came home with, but a random selection of words that use the spelling rule that they worked on and learnt through the week.
* tricky words: words that aren’t spelled the way they sound. For instance ‘said’ is often written as ‘sed’ and children are initially confused with this specific example as it uses the ‘ai’ grapheme, but doesn’t rhyme with ‘train’.
We also develop and build upon children’s skills in punctuation and grammar through the Key Stages. To help show this better, the table below informs you of the expectations of each year group in Reading Comprehension, Sentence Structure and Punctuation, Writing and Spelling.
| Year | Reading Comprehension | Sentence Structure and Punctuation | Writing | Spelling |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yr 1 | Make inferences on the basis of what is being said and done. Eg. How a character feels, why a character does something. |
Recognise capital letters and sentence end punctuation and begin to use them. Begin to join clauses using ‘and’. | Write a sequence of sentences to form a short narrative or piece of information writing, using simple descriptive language. | Use phonic knowledge and skills to spell phonemically regular words correctly. Spell the first 100 high-frequency words (HFWs). Spell Year 1 common exception words. |
| Yr 2 | Make inferences on the basis of what’s being said and done; show understanding of cause and effect. | Sentences are punctuated accurately, including question marks, exclamation marks and commas. Use co-ordination (and, or, but) and subordination (when, if, that, because) to write compound/ complex sentences. Expand noun phrases to add description and detail. | Write a sequence of sentences, maintaining consistent tense and verb form. Use features appropriate to the text type. Organise writing into simple sections. | Spell accurately simple polysyllabic words, showing understanding of most of the common grapheme-phoneme-correspondences (GPCs). Spell the next 200 HFWs. Spell Year 2 common exception words. |
| Yr 3 | Draw inferences such as characters’ feelings, thoughts and motives from their actions. | Sentences are punctuated accurately, with developing accuracy in the use of speech marks. Use a wider range of subordination (after, while) and express time using adverbs (then, next). Expand noun phrases using modification before and prepositional phrases after. | Organise paragraphs around a theme, using a range of organisational devices. Demonstrate understanding of the main features of different forms of writing. | Spell unknown words using phonic knowledge, knowledge of prefixes and suffixes and etymology. Begin to spell Year 3/4 word list. |
| Yr 4 | Draw inferences such as characters’ feelings, thoughts and motives from their actions and justify with evidence from the text or life experience. | Sentences are punctuated accurately, including apostrophes (contractions and possession) and commas after fronted adverbials. Express time using preposition (before dark, because of Fred) and use fronted adverbials for additional information. | Organise paragraphs around a theme, using a range of organisational devices and a range of verb forms. Write using a rich and varied vocabulary appropriate to purpose and form. Accurate use of pronouns and nouns aid cohesion and avoid repetition. | Spell unknown words using phonic knowledge, knowledge of prefixes and suffixes and etymology. Spell Year 3/4 word list. |
| Yr 5 | Make inferences drawn from across and between texts. | Sentences are punctuated accurately and becoming more varied with subordination and fronted adverbials. Commas are used for lists and some clauses/openers. Speech has speech marks and some other punctuation. | Writing is appropriate to purpose and organised into sections and paragraphs. There is an awareness of audience with some vocabulary and detail chosen for effect. Tenses are correct and subject/verbs agree. | All phonics secure and HFW accurate, including spelling increasingly complex words correctly. Begin to spell Year 5/6 word list. |
| Yr 6 | Make inferences drawn from across and between texts and justify with evidence (use Point, Evidence and Explanation to support inferences). | Sentences are varied with multiple clauses, subordination and fronted adverbials. Commas, dashes and brackets are used to mark clauses and clarify meaning. Speech is punctuated accurately and used effectively. | Writing is appropriate to purpose with some adaption of style. The text is cohesive, organised into sections and paragraphs, with ideas often developed and connections made between them. Vocabulary, detail and sentences are often chosen for effect. | All phonics secure and HFW accurate, including spelling increasingly complex words correctly. Use knowledge of word structure to spell and check spelling. Spell Year 5/6 word list. |