Reading including Speaking and Listening

Saint Patrick’s Catholic Primary School

‘We arise today, to learn, love and grow through Jesus.’

At Saint Patrick’s we aim to create an environment in which each individual has the opportunity to thrive supported by values of Christ firmly built into our everyday foundations. Education, welfare and wellbeing are at the heart of everything we do. Above all else, we want to foster a strong belief in all our children that they can succeed in all they do, no matter what. Working with all school parties, we wish to nurture each child’s potential and foster high aspirations. It is essential that we give them the tool kit needed to achieve their goals regardless of background or starting points.

Intent

The national curriculum for reading aims to ensure that all pupils:

read easily, fluently and with good understanding
develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas
are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate.

At St. Patrick’s, we believe that, through the study of reading, children gain necessary life skills to allow them to access the world around them. Through our curriculum, we aim to ensure that our children become competent, confident readers and we aim to instil a life-long, love for reading and English literature.

Throughout the EYFS, children will follow the Rising Stars Rocket Phonics Scheme to expose them to a variety of sounds from the English language. By the end of the EYFS, the children should have a developing ability to decode, segment and blend words which use the correlating sounds to their developmental stage in the Rocket Phonics scheme. They should also be able to recognise a variety of common exception words relevant to their developmental stage within the scheme. The children should have a developed recognition for print, know that print carries meaning and understand that, in the English language, we read from left to right.

Throughout KS1, the children will continue to develop their phonic knowledge using the Rising Stars Rocket Phonics Scheme. By the end of KS1, they should have developed a wider knowledge of letter sounds from the English language and should be able to read a larger amount of common exception words. The children should be able to use this knowledge to decode and begin to read with a developing fluency and understanding of what they have read by checking that the text makes sense to them. By the end of KS1, the children should be able to ask and answer questions about a variety of texts that are appropriate to their developmental stage. They should be able to discuss a wide variety of texts including fiction, non-fiction and poetry and should have an understanding that non-fiction texts are often structured in different ways. The children should be able to make predictions based on what has been read so far and should be able to make inferences based on what is being said and what is being done.

Throughout KS2, the children will continue to develop their fluency and by the end of KS2, they should be able to read confidently and competently, check that the text makes sense to them by self-correcting their reading and have a full knowledge of the common exception words, root words, prefixes and suffixes. By continuing to develop their reading skills, the children will be able to ask and answer questions about what they have read, compare, contrast, argue, analyse, and evidence a variety of topics, including but not limited to, characters, settings, authorial choice, figurative language and facts and opinions. By the end of KS2, the children will be able to confidently perform texts using a wide range of devices to engage the audience and for effect. They will be able to select books, based on their growing preferences in which they will read for pleasure.

Implementation

Our Curriculum

At St. Patrick’s, reading is taught through a variety of mediums; early reading is primarily taught using systematic, synthetic phonics that follows the guidance from the Rocket Phonics scheme.

To continue to develop the children’s reading skills, we ensure that children participate in at least one weekly guided reading session, with a quality text, that is of an appropriate level of challenge for them. In our guided reading sessions, the children will access texts that are of an accurate reading level that have been selected from the Rising Stars Reading Planet resources, to ensure the progression of reading skills as they transition through the school. The children develop their independent skills, in relation to inferencing, predicting, summarising, retrieving and commentating, by participating in guided reading sessions and by accessing an independent reading task that allows them to further consolidate their skills.

At St. Patrick’s, reading is also taught concurrently with writing using Focus English. This scheme allows us to explore many reading skills throughout our investigations of quality fiction and non-fiction texts. Additionally, the children are further exposed to quality texts through our chosen class novels.

Reading teaching focuses on enabling children to word read and to comprehend what they have read. Our principal aim is to develop the children’s knowledge, skills, understanding and independence in reading. We believe that children learn best when: