Reading at Queniborough Primary School

Our Curriculum leaders for English are Mrs Metcalfe, Mrs Worby and Mrs Spencer

‘To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage, which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience, and the fruits of many inquiries. ‘—A.C. Grayling

At Queniborough Primary School we believe it our duty and pleasure to not only teach children to read but to open up to them all the opportunities being a fluent and purposeful reader brings. A love of books and the written word in all formats is central to our approach to reading.

The teaching of reading begins as soon as children begin school. A structured and systematic teaching approach is taken to developing the necessary decoding skills by following the synthetic phonics scheme Bug Phonics, with daily discreet teaching sessions in all classes. Children’s progress is regularly monitored and appropriate interventions are put in place when needed. Children can read books, which are carefully matched to their phonic knowledge, both at home and school regularly. They also have the opportunity to access the online books and activities that support the scheme. In addition to this, we ensure all children have the experience of enjoying books and stories beyond their reading ability. They can take books home from our class libraries and every class has a daily storytime with an adult to promote the love of reading, develop comprehension skills and extend vocabulary. Children read with adults at school through a combination of 1-1 and group reading with a priority given to those children who are currently not reaching the expected level.

Parents can attend our reading workshops designed to further their understanding of the reading curriculum so that they can support their children with reading at home.

In Key Stage Two we teach reading explicitly, as part of our daily English lessons. This includes comprehension sessions, group reading, interventions, and 1:1 reading with teachers, support staff, and volunteers. Our children are also taught the skills of reading and are immersed in literature through the non-core curriculum.

All of our Key Stage Two children read book-banded books and also take home ‘reading for pleasure’ books from our class libraries to promote a love of reading. We use a range of book schemes and individually sourced texts from first-class authors to inspire our children.

Phonics

At Queniborough we have decided to use Bug Club Phonics as our teaching scheme and use the associated reading books as our main source of decodable reading books for children

We teach phonics from EYFS to Year 2. Once children move into Year 3, we teach phonics as an intervention for those who are still identified as needing support with reading, alongside other reading comprehension interventions. We use a variety of reading resources, to support our pupils in experiencing a wide range of literature at school and at home, which supports their learning of phonics.

Please click here for more information about how we teach reading and phonics at Queniborough

Whole-class guided reading:

Teachers read with pupils a range of texts focusing on comprehension and specific features about objectives and content domains. This is an opportunity for teachers to model the act of being a fluent reader. Teachers demonstrate to the class by ‘thinking aloud’ the skills required to be a reader. Within whole class guided reading, we explore the different content domains found in the National Curriculum, allowing children to break down questions into key skills and understand how they are required to approach a text. We also use the strategy of “Point, explain, and evidence” to teach the structure of answering written comprehension questions, particularly those which involve using evidence from the text.

Teachers are encouraged to use a variety of resources to teach reading, including newspaper articles, video clips, extracts from novels, poetry, etc., covering a breadth of topics. Teachers choose high-quality novels to read over a length of time to their classes prompting discussions about themes and comparisons with other novels. Whole class guided reading is taught in most classes and group guided reading sessions are used in intervention groups.

Individual Reading

Each class has a dedicated reading area containing a range of books and text types for children to access independently. Children are encouraged to take books home every night and share them with an adult. KS1 and LKS2 children have banded books to choose from – children further up the school have free choice but their choices are monitored to ensure they are selecting a wide range of literature.

To view the QPS English policy in full please click here

To view the QPS Reading curriculum planning please click here

To view the QPS Intent and Impact document for reading please click here