Reading

Intent

We believe that reading is an integral part of the school curriculum and a fundamental life skill that impacts on all learning. We want every child to love reading and to want to learn to read for themselves. Therefore, we aim to inspire a true love of reading, whereby our children are enthusiastic and motivated readers who feel confident to be able to talk about books and authors. We ensure our children have access to a high-quality English curriculum that is both challenging and enjoyable for all readers. We teach our children to be inquisitive readers, provoking thought, leading to children who enjoy asking questions about the texts they are reading; allowing them to gain a deeper understanding of what they have read.  

We recognise the importance of reading wide and often and so ensure our reading curriculum is broad and balanced. Stretching across a wide range of genres, we teach a variety of discreet and cross-curricular learning opportunities, so that our children truly appreciate our literary heritage. Reading underpins learning in all areas of the curriculum, and we recognise this by using opportunities to teach reading skills in our non-core subjects. 

Our Reading Curriculum

In Early Years and Key Stage 1, early word reading is taught through a systematic synthetic phonics programme (Little Wandle) which has been carefully designed to best meet the needs of the children at Ivy Bank.  Children in Nursery are given a wide range of language rich experiences that develop their awareness of sounds, rhythm and rhyme.  All children have the opportunity to listen to stories both read and told to them every day. See our Phonics page to find out more information on how we teach phonics at Ivy Bank.

In Key Stage 1 and 2 we progressively teach reading strategies and behaviours that can be applied to a range of text types and genres across the whole curriculum. We use the ‘Steps to Read’ programme of work (from Literacy Counts) where we create opportunities to develop reading fluency and comprehension with a focus on key reading strategies and skills. Steps to Read provides a clear teaching sequence to reading sessions that explicitly teach reading skills and strategies in a cumulative way through evidence-based approaches. These lessons are set around a range of quality literature each half term.

Reading for Pleasure

At Ivy Bank, we recognise that reading for pleasure at school is a vital part of the jigsaw when enabling children to learn to have a life-long love for reading. During the school year, the children share their love of reading with our school community through events such as World Book Day, Book Swaps, Book Fair, Mystery Reader and author visits.

Every year we celebrate World Book Day with fancy dress and themed actvities. We also invite authors into school to show children just how exciting reading and writing can be. Recently,  Duncan Beadie, author and illustrator of 'The Bear Who Stared' and 'The Lumberjack's Beard' inspired us. 

In school, we have a well-resourced library, which is open to every child offering high quality books promoting an independent approach to learning and reading. 

Reading Support at Home

The EEF have shared 7 top tips to support reading at home:

Resources to Support Phonics and Reading 

Click on the name to access the website

Oxford Owl Website: Phonics information for parents 

Oxford Owl Website: Reading comprenhension information for parents 

Oxford Owl Website: Free e-book library. You will need to create your own user and password to acces over 250 e-books 

BBC iplayer: Cbeebies bedtime reading videos 

Phonics Play: Phonics games 

Top Marks: Spelling and grammar games 

Story Nory: Audio stories for kids 

Stuck for what to read?

If your child is finding it difficult to know what they want to read, here are some websites you may find helpful:

Book Trust: 100 Best Books for children 

Common Sense Media: 50 Books all kids should read before they're 12 

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