Reading 

At Shipley C of E Primary, we believe that Reading is the heart of the curriculum. Our creative and highly engaging curriculum inspires and supports learners to develop their reading, writing, speaking and listening skills; thereby enabling them to become interested, effective and active learners. Our use of carefully selected high-quality texts ensures that learners are exposed to a range of texts, including those from different cultures, during their time at Shipley. Reading is encouraged to ensure we promote a culture of children who love to read. Learners are immersed in vocabulary-rich learning environments which support language development, and help to expand their own vocabulary. 

Early reading begins in Nursery, where the adults promote a love of reading and listening to stories alongside laying the foundations of their phonics learning journey. 

 By the end of Key Stage One our children are fluent readers who enjoy the delights of reading for pleasure and to learn and those children who are continuing to develop these skills are given the support they require through effective interventions. 

Our challenging and inspiring English curriculum, which is aligned to the National Curriculum, develops knowledge, understanding and skills when reading and writing a range of age-appropriate genres.

Intent, Implementation, Impact 

Here is our intent, implementation and impact document for English:

Progression in Reading

Here is our Progression Document for Reading: 

Phonics

'The most important starting point is to read to children. Reading to children is the best way of encouraging them to love books and reading.

By reading stories aloud to children every day, you are forming a link for them between reading, comfort and love. When you love a book, your children will want to hear it again and again! Children thrive on repetition, so when you’ve read Room on the Broom for the hundredth time, remember you are hard wiring their brains for success.'                             

(Ruth Miskin, 2020)

At Shipley C of E Primary School, we follow the systematic synthetic phonics programme, 'Read Write Inc.'. Phonics is taught on a daily basis throughout the EYFS and KS1 and targeted interventions are delivered using Read Write Inc. in KS2. We are committed to every child learning to read as quickly as possible with the strongest start to reading in the Foundation Stage. We follow Ruth Miskin's 'Read Write Inc Phonics' programme daily in EYFS and KS1 and follow the programme rigorously.

 Read Write Inc sessions take place every morning for all Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 children, as the pace and consistency of the programme is a key element to developing reading skills for all children. This is integral to allowing our children to effectively learn the rest of the school curriculum using their knowledge and skill in reading.

Our ultimate aims and objectives within the Read Write Inc. programme are for the children to be able to learn and apply sound blending skills and to learn to segment words in order to be able to create skilled and confident readers. Children also learn to read and spell words that do not conform to regular phonetic patterns (High Frequency Words) and decode both fiction and non-fiction texts through discussion, performance and teacher led activities. 

Following a short series of Read Write Inc. lessons, children are then given accurately matched, fully decodable Read Write Inc. 'Book Bag Books' that allow the children to apply their phonic knowledge and practice reading at home with their parents. This means that the books contain only the sounds in which the children have already been taught so far and leaves nothing for the children to 'guess' when reading (which can often lead to errors). It is therefore important for the children to experience success when reading these books and they must be celebrated for reading these fluently at home. Allow them to show off their reading ability to you at home and share the joy of reading together!

Reciprocal Reading

We follow the ‘Reciprocal Reading’ strategy to whole class reading. We use five reading skills, these are:

Whole school library

Each class has a weekly slot to access our school library. All children in school then take home a 'reading for pleasure' book to share with adults at home. We have some Year 5 library monitors who help to keep our library tidy. 

KS1 Library and Phonics Garden

Class Stories 

We know how important it is to read a class story to our children at the end of each day. Therefore, each class has a basket of 'Class Story' books. These baskets are displayed in each classroom and include the 6 books we will read as a whole class during the school year. We have ensured we have some fiction books, stories from other cultures, poetry and non-fiction texts.  

Reading Policy

Here is our Reading Policy: 

Reading at home 

 Here are the most recent parent letters regarding reading: 

 How can you help at home?

- Listen to your child read their RWI phonics book or colour banded book regularly and record it in their reading diary. See the letter above for hints and tips on how to fill in the reading diary.

- Share your child's reading for pleasure library book with them. You could read it to them, read a page each or let them read to you.

- See the parent/carer guide below for more advice and useful websites.